


Open Field in Front of Him

by orphan_account



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, American Football, Angst with a Happy Ending, Clint Barton Is a Good Bro, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, M/M, Physical Abuse, The Questionable Personal Hygiene of College Boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 01:35:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 66,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5028601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers's football season is functionally over after a loss to Rutgers, but he finds a distraction in Tony Stark (yes, THAT Tony Stark). A college AU Stony fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Kick-off

So that’s it. That’s the season.

Everyone’s mad at Clint, like it’s Clint’s fault their two best guards went down with injuries and he’s not getting any protection from the second-string guys. Meanwhile Steve’s the big hero for getting a pick-six, which he doesn’t mind exactly, because it was a good play, but he wishes it didn’t have to be at Clint’s expense.

Everyone’s drunk.

Even drunker than usual, because the season’s not actually over but their chances at the playoffs are gone. Everyone’s feeling crappy about it and trying to ease the pain with alcohol. It’s not all that fun being the only sober person at a party, but Steve doesn’t have a fake ID and he has to stick around anyway to give Clint and Sam and Peggy a ride home later.

“I’m going to get some fresh air!” he hollers at Sam, when the noise is getting to him too much and he really can’t take it.

Sam nods intelligently, then shouts, “What?”

“AIR!” Steve bellows.

“What?”

Steve gives up and mimes smoking a cigarette, which Sam would know was ridiculous if he were anywhere near sober.

He heads out back. Lynch’s has a nice tall stoop on the side of the building, away from the parking lot. The real smokers don’t know it’s there—Steve only knows because he works at Lynch’s in the spring—so he’s almost guaranteed privacy.

To his dismay, there’s someone already on his stoop. His face is faintly lit by the glow of an iPad, so Steve can see messy brown hair and hooded, focused eyes, and not much else. “Sorry,” he says automatically.

The tablet guy looks up and does a double take. “Holy fuck,” he says. “Is there some kind of genie sponsoring me right now?”

“What?” Steve says, already angling his body to head back inside.

Tablet Guy raises an eyebrow and smiles at him. It’s an astonishingly effective smile, not less so for being practiced. Steve has to catch his breath.

“I’m just sitting out here feeling sorry for myself,” Tablet Guy says, “and here comes the literally hottest guy on earth to console me in my solitude.”

Steve huffs a laugh and goes to sit on the stoop after all. “Yeah, you looked like you needed a whole lot of consoling,” he says. “Beating the highest score in Candy Crush over here.”

“Excuse you,” says Tablet Guy, nudging Steve with his shoulder. “I’m running an analysis on product demand as it compares to—” He catches Steve’s eye. “Other really boring stuff that boring business people have to do.”

“When you could be doing keg stands?” says Steve, teasing.

Tablet Guy snorts. “Yeah. This, uh, isn’t really my scene. As you may have guessed.”

“Mine either,” says Steve.

He realizes how stupid this sounds as soon as it comes out of his mouth. Tablet Guy gives him another devastating smile and shoves a hank of dark hair out of his eyes.

“Really,” Tablet Guy says.

“Um.”

“Because. You know. You’re wearing a Badgers jersey. Couldn’t help but notice.”

Steve is blushing. He’s glad it’s dark so Tablet Guy can’t see. “Yeah. I meant. Football’s my scene, obviously. I meant this whole, drinking revelry thing isn’t me so much.” _Way to sound like an absolute square._ “I’m Steve Rogers.”

“Tony,” says Tablet Guy.

“Glad to know you, Tony,” says Steve. “So, not a football fan.”

“Not so much. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the, ah.” He leans back slightly to give Steve a once-over, and Steve can feel himself blushing again. “Specimens.”

Steve leans backward against the wall of Lynch’s and laughs. “Specimens, huh? Does that make you a science guy, or are you still a stats guy?”

“I get to do science when I’ve finished all my stats,” Tony says.

“Gotcha. Science for love, stats for?”

“Money,” says Tony. “Family business.” He cocks his head at Steve as he says this, as if he’s expecting Steve to laugh.

“Hey, that’s nice,” Steve says. “My pop used to say when he got out of the army, he’d open up an ice cream parlor, and we’d run it together after I finish school, if I didn’t make it in the big time.”

“You expecting to make it in the big time?”

“Not _expecting._ ”

“Oh come on, don’t make me google you. Are you good enough at football to go pro, or not? You’re, what, a—” Tony looks him up and down, and it feels like he’s stroked a finger from Steve’s sternum to his waist. Steve shivers a little bit. “Receiver?”

“So you do know football.”

“I know they have receivers.”

Steve laughs. “Close. I’m a corner. It’s a lot of the same skills, but on the defensive side. My roommate Sam Wilson?” He eyes Tony for signs of recognition, but Tony shakes his head. “Okay, you _don’t_ know football. Sam’s an amazing wide receiver, he’s made a plurality of touchdowns for the Badgers this year. Definitely going to get snapped up in the draft next year.”

“Plurality,” Tony repeats. “You’re adorable. So are you going to get snapped up too?”

“Nah,” says Steve.

“Jesus, Steve, it’s like pulling teeth. Why not?”

“I’m gay,” Steve says.

“You’re kidding,” says Tony.

“No, I am.”

Tony snorts and nudges Steve with his shoulder again. “Not about being gay, hotshot. If you weren’t gay I have to think you’d be a lot less flirty with me right now. I meant, you’re kidding about them not wanting to _draft_ you because you’re gay. Do they seriously give a shit about that, if you’re good?”

Steve looks down at his hands. Wasn’t that the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.

“Hey,” says Tony.

“Hey,” says Steve.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. Just—I’m surprised. That it matters. In most arenas it wouldn’t.” Tony hesitates. “Wasn’t there a queer football player who was a big deal last year?”

“Yeah. Michael Sam. He got drafted onto an NFL team, people talked a lot about distractions in the locker room, and he got cut after training camp.”

“Oh,” says Tony. “Did another team pick him up?”

“Yep,” Steve says. “The Montreal Alouettes.”

“Fuck off.”

“Swear to God.”

Tony starts to laugh, and it makes Steve laugh too, and then they have a hard time stopping. “That’s how I see your future,” Tony says finally, leaning forward to giggle. “Fuck, now my stomach hurts. Steve Rogers of the Montreal Alouettes. Like the song. You know that really fucked-up French song?”

“Do I?”

Tony sings it. In his husky voice, it sounds nice. Not messed up. _Alouette, gentille alouette, alouette, je te plumerai._ “Know what that means?”

“Nope,” says Steve. He does, but he wants Tony to tell him anyway.

“It means, Lark, nice lark, I’m going to pull out all your feathers. _If you don’t shut the fuck up_ strongly implied.”

Steve laughs.

“So an ice cream shop’s your back-up plan in case things don’t work out with the Alouettes,” Tony says. He is so focused on Steve. It makes Steve’s heart flutter a little, these questions, this attention.

“Oh,” says Steve. “No. Um. No. My dad actually— Well, he died. In Afghanistan, when I was a kid.”

“Shit. I’m sorry.”

“Thanks.” Steve doesn’t want to leave it there. Mentioning your dead parents is an unfailing conversation killer. “I just always thought it sounded nice, being part of a family business. You’re lucky.”

“Yeah,” says Tony. His voice sounds a little funny.

They sit in silence for a minute. Looks like Steve’s gambit to save the conversation went down like a lead balloon. Tony’s probably sitting there right now thinking about his own parents dying and feeling crummy about it. _Way to kill the mood, Rogers._

“So—” Steve begins.

“Do you—” says Tony at the same time.

“Go ahead,” says Steve. He doesn’t really have anything to say anyway. He just wants to get Tony talking again. He likes him. He hasn’t liked anyone this much in a while.

“Do you ever get a day off?”

“From what?”

“Cornering people’s backs,” says Tony.

Steve grins. “See that, you say football’s not your scene, and then you come with this high-level football analysis. Yeah, I get days off. I’m not in football jail. Do you get days off from analyzing product demand?”

“For you, baby, I think I can promise to get off,” and Tony tilts his head sideways and smiles at Steve, and _wow,_ the effect of that smile does not pall with repetition. Steve is speechless, and he’s pretty sure he’s blushing again.

“Eighteeeeeeeeeeen!” howls a regrettably familiar voice.

“Oh, hell,” says Steve. “That’s me. Hang on.” He gets to his feet, ducks under the oak leaves, and finds a drunk Sam slumped over a giggling Peggy, staggering around the parking lot like a bunch of idiots.

“Where’s Clint?” he says.

Peggy is laughing too hard to answer.

“Clint’s too sad,” reports Sam. “To ever come home.”

Steve glances back, hoping that Tony’s not witnessing this display of debauchery. No such luck: He’s emerged from the side of Lynch’s with his tablet and is leaning against the back door, one hand over his mouth to hide a grin. Now that Steve can see him properly, he’s even better-looking than Steve thought.

“Hey,” Steve says, crossing the parking lot to him. “Could you keep an eye on these two idiots while I go inside and get Clint? Just don’t let them wander off. I have to get them all in one car.”

“Sure,” says Tony. He’s a good height: shorter than Steve by a few inches, but not so short that Steve would get uncomfortable kissing him.

God, Steve wants to kiss him. This must be why people have one-night stands, this clenched thrill in Steve’s stomach, except a one-night stand wouldn’t be anything like enough. _Down, boy,_ Steve orders himself. Once he gets Clint in the car, he’s going to ask Tony out. He hasn’t dated much since he’s been on the Badgers—well, actually, he hasn’t dated much at all—but this, he’s not letting go.

“Hi,” Tony says. His shadowed eyes are amused, and Steve realizes with a jolt that he’s just been standing there grinning down at Tony, too close.

“Oh,” he says. “Yeah. So. Okay. You’re going to keep an eye on them for me for a sec, and I’m going to go get my buddy Clint.”

“Okay. Hey, don’t forget about me while you’re inside,” and Tony grabs a fistful of Steve’s jersey and kisses him, deep. It’s a sunburst of sensation, Tony’s knuckles against his clavicle, desire uncoiling in Steve’s stomach, Tony’s tongue in his mouth, hot and hungry. Steve brings a hand up to Tony’s shoulder, to tug him closer.

“Eight _een!_ ” booms Sam in an announcer’s voice.

Steve jolts back. He forgot they had an audience.

In the streetlights, he can see that Tony’s mouth is wet from Steve’s, and it lights him up with desire. Tony’s eyes are in shadow, although—

“Hey,” says Steve. “You’ve got a black eye.” He ghosts his fingers along the edge of Tony’s cheekbone, careful, careful.

Tony’s eyes are bright with laughter, under Steve’s touch. “Yep. I love science, but it doesn’t love me back. One of my helper bots—take ‘helper’ with a pinch of salt—clocked me with a mug when it was trying to clean up. I’m thrilled we had the chance to rehearse that not-at-all-embarrassing sequence of events before the night was over. Go get your drunk friend, I’ll watch these two.”

Steve finds Clint after ten minutes of searching. He’s sprawled on a sofa explaining to his tolerant back-up the pressures of being the quarterback. Wadzinski is nodding politely at intervals and mostly paying attention to the leggy girl sitting on the other side of him.

“Steve-o!” Clint howls.

“Hey, buddy,” says Steve. “Sam and Peg are ready to go, you want to head out?”

Clint slumps forward. “Yes,” he says to his knees. “Everyone doesn’t love me.”

“Well I love you,” Steve says. “Come on, buddy. Let’s get you home.”

He wouldn’t describe what he’s doing as carrying Clint, although at times it isn’t far off, with Clint’s arm around his neck and his feet dragging. When he gets out back, Sam and Peggy have wandered a little ways away from the parking lot, and Peggy is singing the fight song at the top of her not-inconsiderable lungs.

Steve gets Clint buckled into Sam’s crappy Corolla and goes back for the other two. He looks around for Tony, to make a joke about Tony being a terrible babysitter, but Tony seems to have headed back in. Steve’s stomach swoops in disappointment.

“Making out with Tony Stark,” Sam says, laughing alcohol fumes into Steve’s face as Steve herds him towards the Corolla.

“ _Stark?_ ” Steve says. He just misses slamming the car door on Sam’s fingers, he’s so stunned. Stark _Industries_ Stark? (Stark Laboratory for the Applied Sciences, for that matter. Stark Student Union. Stark School of Business.)

As he’s corralling Peggy, he sees that Tony hasn’t gone back inside, after all. He’s leaned up against the corner of Lynch’s, in the shadow cast by the trees there, and he’s talking on the phone, fast and serious. Steve can’t see his face properly, but his posture is tense, shoulders drawn together, free hand crossed over his chest.

_Stark?_

Steve wants to kiss him again.

He hasn’t kissed anyone since—

No.

Peggy is buckling herself in, and the car is rocking from the force of Sam’s chair-dancing. _Stark._ Steve pokes his head in the driver’s side door of the Corolla and says, “Hey, Peg, that guy I was talking to—”

“Get it, eighteen!” roars Sam.

“Tony Stark?” says Peggy. “Is he even legal?”

“Yes!” Steve says defensively, although he has no idea. God. Tony Stark, and Steve was babbling to him like an idiot about family-owned businesses. Stark Industries was a far cry from Steve’s silly, childish dream about an ice cream shop. Why hadn’t Tony said—

“Come on, come on, come on,” Clint whimpers. “I’m gonna hurl, man.”

“Quit dancing!” Peggy orders. Sam ignores her. He’s at that stage.

Steve takes one last look at Tony, but he’s still on the phone, and his back is to Steve now, so Steve can’t even wave goodbye. Well, if he’s really Tony Stark, it’s not like he needs Steve to make out with. God, it’s not like he was going to _go on a date with_ Steve, even if he is legal. ( _Is_ he legal?)

He stands there, arms crossed against the chill, irresolute, waiting for Tony to turn around. But Tony doesn’t, and at some point Steve has to take pity on his car’s axles. He ducks into the car and drives his idiot friends home. They have a lot of jokes to make about cradle-robbing and sugar daddies, and Steve tunes them out.

It’s stupid, but he feels lost. Like he missed out on a really, really good thing.

***

Once Sam’s settled in bed, Steve takes his laptop downstairs to the dorm lobby and looks up Tony Stark. He’s eighteen, which makes Steve grin stupidly before remembering that he made a fool of himself in front of Tony and didn’t get his number anyway so it’s not like it matters whether he’s old enough for Steve to date him.

He’s an MIT graduate, and he’s at Nelson because— Well, Steve can’t exactly figure out why. Up until this summer, he was in Malibu or Los Angeles or New York or bouncing between the three, getting drunk (he’s _eighteen_ ) and stoned (who the hell’s looking out for him) and kissed (by women, it’s always women). Stark Industries has an R&D satellite office near Nelson, and they give a ton of money to the school, because Maria Stark graduated from here.

It feels rude to keep digging.

It’s ruder, probably, to jerk off thinking of Tony Stark in the shower that night, but he’s never going to see him again anyway. And Steve can’t stop thinking about that _focus,_ how amazing it would feel to have those dark eyes on his body giving their attention to nothing but getting Steve off. That wicked, wry mouth on his skin.

As he’s falling asleep, Steve tells himself to put Tony Stark out of his head. That’s a mess he doesn’t need, he tells himself. And even if he does need it, it’s a mess he can’t have. A mess that’s so far out of his league it (he) might as well be from another planet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first fic in this fandom! Leave a comment if you're enjoying it! :D


	2. Zone Coverage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony is slightly sneaky, and Steve is not sneaky at all (a date).

This is a bad idea, and Tony Stark knows from bad ideas.

In his defense, he has resisted for over a week which, given the temptation, he considers to be very close to superhuman. If he’s giving in now, it’s just because Pepper refuses to listen to him talk about his hot cornerback crush any longer. “Fish or cut bait,” she said.

Also, he watched a game. The jersey and loose jeans Steve Rogers wore on the night Tony met him did not in any way too justice to his shoulders, hips, or ass, all of which were on glorious display in Nelson’s game against Michigan State the following weekend. Nelson won the game, but nobody cares anymore, for reasons several people have tried—enthusiastically—to explain to Tony. It’s something to do with divisions. And strength of schedule. And broken systems. Tony figures he can get his hot cornerback crush to explain it to him.

(If Steve wants to explain it.)

(If he’s even interested.)

Tony is choosing to view this experiment, waiting outside the weight room for the Badgers to get through with a weight training regime that can’t possibly be as luridly erotic as Tony’s picturing it, as a win-win situation. If Steve wants to go out with him: Win. First date since moving to goddamn Nelson. If Steve doesn’t want to go out with him: Win. Nothing for the press to uncover or Obie to disapprove of or Howard to be pissed about on his next trip to Jersey.

That last part’s sort of a joke. There’s always something for Howard to be pissed about, when it comes to Tony.

But Tony’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about a number 18 jersey and an earnest fair-haired boy leaning into him to laugh about his own shitty job prospects. He’s thinking about eyes the color of the sky in September and a mouth that tastes like mint, and hands as big as Tony’s whole face that are so, so gentle.

When the team finally gets out, Tony lets himself enjoy the sight of them, umpty-finity big strong men damp from their showers, pouring out of the weights building in loud, obnoxious groups of two and three. Sam Wilson, who Tony remembers from Lynch’s, is one of the first out, and he’s on his own. Tony’s relieved. He doesn’t want to have to separate Steve from the herd. Herds notice when one of their own goes missing with a perennially scandalous billionaire’s son. Herds sell that information to tabloids in New York.

“Hey,” says a voice behind him.

Tony scrambles to his feet, ruining the casual sunglasses ankles-crossed thing he had going for him. “Hey,” he says, not at all cool. Steve’s hair is wet, and he’s not wearing nearly enough clothes for November, and these are not circumstances conducive to coolness.

Steve is smiling down at him. It is an uneven thing, Steve’s smile, and it involves more eyes than teeth. It’s the least done-on-purpose smile Tony has ever seen.

“You here for me?” he says.

“Wow, ego much?” says Tony. Steve’s smile falters, so he scrambles to recover, make it clear he’s joking. “For your information, I am here on a matter completely unrelated to my preposterous failure not to get your number last week.”

“Since I’m here, though,” Steve offers, rubbing a hand back through his hair.

“Since you’re here.” Tony is in so much trouble. It’s addictive, how easy this is, how much he likes Steve. “Can I take you to dinner?”

“Um,” Steve says. He’s watching the rest of the team drift away in all their shouty, sweaty camaraderie.

Tony says, not as nastily as he’s capable of, but not nicely, “If you don’t want to be seen with me we can just skip straight to fucking.”

“What?” says Steve. He’s surprised in this way that tugs at Tony’s heart, half flustered from the language, half stunned by the sentiment. “Um. I didn’t—I wanted to talk to a couple of the guys about— I used to— No. Sorry. Why would I not want to be seen with you?”

“Well.”

“Oh the _gay_ thing?” Steve says. “They know. I wouldn’t lie about it.”

“Perish the thought,” Tony says wryly.

Steve’s so obviously relieved to have sussed out the problem that he starts babbling. It’s cute. “Not that, um, I mean, if anything you might not want to be seen with _me._ You’re obviously some kind of genius, and I’m. You know. Barely hanging onto my C in calc.”

Tony says, “I can tutor you.” That’s how he can tell he’s got it bad, offering to help a jock wade through the differential equations he grew out of before the other kids his age were in middle school. He hates teaching, and he isn’t good at it, doesn’t have the patience.

“Oh.” Steve looks down at his hands. “That’s okay. I mean—it’d be a waste of your time.”

(True, but Tony doesn’t say so.)

“I already have a tutor, anyway. The athletic department takes care of their dumb jocks.” He grins like this is a joke, but his smile doesn’t reach his eyes this time.

So, math classes are a sensitive subject. Noted.

“What’d you want to talk to the guys about?” Tony says.

Steve looks flattered that Tony was listening. The guy has no poker face. “Oh, I’ll get ‘em next time. A couple of the rookie defensive guys are sweating their weight. Coach wants us all to bulk up a little bit, and they’re having a hard time with it, is all.”

Tony glances around (coast is clear, or clear enough), then slides his hand down Steve’s upper arm from the shoulder. “You seem pretty bulky to me already, eighteen.”

Steve blushes bright red.

“Too far?” says Tony.

“No,” Steve says. “I—No. It’s, um. No. I like you. Not too far.” Abstracted, he rubs his upper arm, where Tony’s fingers touched him.

 _I like you._ Who comes right out and says says _I like you,_ who the hell just gives it up like that? If Pepper were here, she’d already be running a background check on her phone. She’s even more suspicious of people than Tony is, and she’s protective.

“I used to be real skinny,” Steve says, explaining.

Tony laughs out loud. “Liar.”

“Nope,” says Steve. He looks absurdly pleased to have made Tony laugh. “I was fast but I was skinny. When I got the scholarship, they said I had to bulk up, so—Here I am.”

“Here you are,” Tony repeats. He’s glad there’s nobody important around to see him. How eager he is. How dopey his face must look, tilted up to Steve’s. “So, how about it? Can I take you to dinner?”

“Like a date?” Steve’s mouth is curved in the best way, not quite a smile, but building up to one, or trying to keep one in.

“Exactly like a date.”

Steve glances down at himself and seems to rediscover his clothes. “I’m kind of a mess,” he says. “Could I meet you someplace? Give me an hour to get back to my dorm and take a shower and change?”

“Sure,” says Tony. Embarrassingly enough, he’s out-of-breath relieved, now that Steve’s said yes, now that he really gets to have him for a few hours. “Meet at Fignori at seven? Do you know where that is? I can send a car.”

(It’s stupid to send a car. It’s beyond stupid. Happy won’t tattle, at least not on purpose, but a car is showy and extravagant, it’s all the things Tony’s supposed to have come to this shitty town to learn to stop being.)

“No,” says Steve, laughing a little. “I can drive, I’ll meet you there. Should I make reservations or—”

“I don’t need reservations,” Tony says, deliberately arrogant. “They’ll seat me.”

“Because you’re rich, or because it’s Tuesday?” says Steve.

Tony laughs without expecting to, and Steve’s lips shape into that not-quite-smile again. It’s Tony’s new favorite thing, that thing Steve does with his mouth. (Pending, of course, further investigation into things Steve can do with his mouth.) “Real cute, Rogers,” he says. “Might not want to sass the man who’s buying you dinner.”

When he says this, Steve’s face resets to serious. “Hey,” he says.

“I’m kidding,” Tony says, quickly. “I like sass. I can actually guarantee extra appetizers and booze in exchange for more sass.”

“I um,” says Steve. He looks guilty. “Listen, I wanted you to know—”

“You’re not like other men,” Tony suggests.

“What?” But Steve’s grinning.

“You only eat gluten-free pasta.”

“No!”

“You don’t put out.”

Steve ducks his head, which should actually probably be illegal, considering how adorable it is.

“You’re a vampire.”

Now Steve really does laugh. “No!” he says. “I eat pasta, I, um, I’m not going to have sex on a first date, I’m not a vampire, but I just wanted to— I think it’s weird to say this but it’s weirder not to, so. Just, my friend Sam recognized you. Like. Who you are. Tony Stark.”

“Oh,” says Tony flatly. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to respond to this, but Steve’s waiting for an answer. “Okay, does that— What, are you a pacifist, you can’t take dinner from the Merchant of Death’s son?”

“What? No.”

“Or is it the slutty drunk fuck-up thing?” This is a trick Tony was born knowing. If he says the worst thing first, he can never be caught off guard by somebody else saying it.

Steve looks pissed off, now. “Who said _that_ to you?” he says.

“Everyone who’s ever googled me?”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say,” says Steve, like he’s somebody’s affronted grandmother. “You’re a kid.”

Not exactly the image of himself he’s been trying to present. Tony doesn’t say _I’m almost nineteen,_ because that’s the kind of thing a kid would say. “Well, hey, the world’s an ugly place. And Stark Industries isn’t making it any prettier. Still want to—”

“Yes,” says Steve, fast and earnest. And he smiles. All eyes. No teeth.

Jesus fuck. Tony is in such serious, serious trouble.

*** 

When Tony gets to Fignori, Steve’s already there, seated in a booth by the window, so wrapped up in an iPad that he doesn’t notice Tony sitting down across from him. “That seat’s actually,” he begins, abstractedly. Then he looks up, and Tony doesn’t remember the last time somebody looked that happy to see him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” says Tony. “Am I interrupting?” With his knuckles, he jostles the hand Steve’s using to hold the iPad.

“Oh. No. It’s not mine. I mean, it’s the athletic department’s.” He’s saving his work and putting the iPad away, shoving it underneath his November coat. “Just going over some plays for next week.”

“Okay, about that,” Tony says. “You’re going to have to explain to me why the season’s supposedly over even though you still have two more games. Use small words, I don’t get football. And don’t get carried away with polemic.”

“Polemic,” Steve repeats, and his cheeks go pink.

When Tony knows Steve a little better ( _dare to dream, Stark_ ), he’s going to have to ask why the _fuck_ Steve doesn’t even try to hide his weak points. Tony’s spent less than an hour with Steve, and he already knows exactly where to stick a knife if he really wants to hurt him.

(He hates that he thinks this way. A poisonous Stark legacy.)

Tony doesn’t define the word _polemic._ Steve can get it from context clues. “I asked a couple people about it, and they went off on, I am telling you, Steve, rants that would not be out of place on AM radio if you know what I’m saying. Something is rotten in the state of college football, I’ve been given to understand.”

Steve laughs, and okay, Tony can understand why Steve gets all smug when he’s made Tony laugh. “It’s sour grapes mostly,” says Steve. “Do you know what strength of schedule means?”

“I’m pretty sure I can figure it out.”

“Right. Oh, hi,” says Steve, as the waitress reaches their table.

Tony’s had her before. As a waitress and, well—

“Mr. Stark,” says the waitress, coolly.

In his defense, this town is really remarkably boring.

She turns her attention to Steve. “Hi, I’m Carly, and I’ll be your server this evening. Can I get you started with something to drink?”

“Hi, Carly,” says Steve. Of course he’s the type of guy who calls the waitress by her name. Obadiah does this too, but for different reasons, and yeah, Tony’s definitely not going to be thinking about Steve and Obie in the same breath ever again.

Steve orders bubbly water. That is what he says: “Bubbly water, please.” Tony orders a Coke, although he’d prefer a bottle of wine. He’s not completely sure that Carly will bring him a bottle of wine, and he doesn’t want Steve to see someone rejecting his fake ID.

“So, okay, strength of schedule,” Steve says, once Carly heads back to the kitchen.

Tony can’t tell whether Steve’s sussed out the awkwardness with Carly and what it’s about, but it doesn’t matter: he’s off and running about football schedules. Like everyone else—well, the two other people Tony asked, a dreadlocked guy at the coffee shop and a cop who was giving Happy a ticket—Steve gets into more detail than Tony needs, but he doesn’t mind this time. He likes seeing Steve lit up this way.

The gist is that Ohio State is undefeated but has been playing crummier teams and is thus undeserving of its success. Steve is especially, and endearingly, furious with the Ohio State coach for (“alleged,” Steve says begrudgingly) moral and ethical transgressions committed at his last job.

“—that these are guys who have been media trained to be discreet, and even _they_ —”

Across the restaurant, Tony can see Carly the waitress talking to a man wearing a Badgers t-shirt and holding a cell phone in his hand. It’s nothing. It’s just that Steve’s hands are really close to Tony’s, and cell phones are cameras.

“—to Percy Harvin, which if you ask me—” Steve stops and brushes a hand over his head, self-conscious. “Hey. Did I lose you?”

“No,” says Tony. It’s nothing. If he looks at the guy with the cell phone, it’ll be a thing. “Nope. Ohio State’s an evil empire, is what you’re saying.”

“I didn’t say that!” Steve is laughing. “They’re good, they’re a strong competitor.”

“Does that mean they beat you?” says Tony.

Steve scrunches his face into a fake scowl. “Yes,” he admits, and they both dissolve into laughter again.

Which of course is when the guy with the cell phone snaps a picture. When their hands are still close, and their heads are tilted down toward each other, too. Tony catches the motion out of the corner of his eye. By the time he looks up, Carly has headed back to the kitchen, and the cell phone guy has put the phone down to sign a receipt.

“Shit,” says Tony.

Steve’s head comes up. “What? Sorry. What?”

“No. No. You didn’t—that guy just took our picture.”

“Oh,” says Steve, glancing over. “Well, that’s okay, we’re—”

“Okay for _who?_ ” snaps Tony.

He’s fishing his phone out of his pocket to text Happy. If Happy can intercept the guy before he sends it to anyone, they’ll be all right. Happy will lecture but Tony’s used to that, and he’ll take a hundred lectures from Happy as long as nobody reports the whole thing back to Obadiah. It’s bad enough being stuck in this shitty town without—

“Hey.” Steve nudges at Tony’s fingers.

“Just, it’s not fucking okay for me,” Tony says. Because there the guy goes with his food, and Tony remembers belatedly that he told Happy to take the next few hours off, not to wait for them. _Fuck._

Steve says, “Okay. Hey, sit tight, I’ll take care of it,” and slides out of the booth.

Tony shuts his eyes for a second, rehearsing possible outcomes in his head. Is one burly, intimidating man interchangeable for another, even if the Plan A burly man has been threatening people over illicit cell phone pictures since Tony was fourteen, and the Plan B one probably captures spiders under cups and takes them outside because all life is precious?

When he opens his eyes, he can see Steve and the guy with the cell phone outside the restaurant window. Nobody is bleeding. The guy with the cell phone is chuckling merrily while Steve reenacts, in mime, a dramatic steal (or whatever they’re called in football). Tony thumbs through some old pictures on his phone, trying not to look like he’s watching, because he doubts he has his face under control.

The guy offers Steve his cell phone, and Steve takes it.

Tony lets out a shaky breath that he’s glad Steve isn’t there to hear. Of course, Carly comes to their table right at that moment. “You okay?” she says.

“Yeah,” says Tony. “Ish.”

Carly says, “Are you on a date with that guy? Jesus, are you gay?”

“I am one hundred percent, without exception, straight,” Tony says, “per the explicit instructions of the men who run the company I’m an embarrassment to.”

“Sounds rough,” Carly says. Tony honestly can’t tell if she’s been sarcastic. It’s a weird conversation to be having with someone he’s had sex with. “Does your hot friend know what he wants to order?”

Outside, Steve is taking a series of selfies with the cell phone guy, in stupid poses that Tony assumes he would understand the point of if he were a football guy.

“Uh,” says Tony. “I’ve been looking at his shoulders kind of more than I’ve been looking at the menu?”

“I’d tap that,” agrees Carly, and hey, evidently she wasn’t being sarcastic before, because here they are, sort of bonding over Steve’s shoulders. “He’s a hell of a corner,” she adds.

“Yeah, it’s bullshit Ohio State’s going to go to the division championship over us,” says Tony.

“I know!” says Carly. “Those fuckers.”

This must be why people like football. Football and Steve Rogers's shoulders: They bring people together. “So what would you recommend, then?” Tony says. “I got the eggplant parm last time, but I don’t know if Steve—”

“Cheese,” says Steve, behind Carly. His nose and ears are pink from the cold, and he looks enormously pleased with himself. “Anything with lots of cheese. The cheesiest thing you have on this menu, that’s what I want to order.”

Carly laughs. Tony can’t remember that much about her—they were both pretty drunk, and he didn’t stay the night—but he doesn’t remember her laughing at all. “Twice-baked lasagna it is,” she says. “Chicken, beef, or vegetable?”

“Vegetable.” Steve thumps his chest with his fist and adds, “Heart health.” He slides back into the booth and flexes his fingers to get the warmth back into them. Tony wants to close his hands around Steve’s to warm them up, but he’s not going to do it in front of the damn window.

“And an eggplant parm?” Carly asks Tony.

“Sure!” says Tony brightly.

“And,” Carly says, “would you want a more private booth?”

“Would that be an inconvenience?” Steve asks.

“That would be great,” says Tony. “You’re a lifesaver, gorgeous, I will tip the living hell out of you.”

They collect drinks and coats and silverware and Steve’s iPad and adjourn to the back room. It’s dimly lit, compared to the front, with flickering tea candles on each table: romantic, and not particularly conducive to amateur photography. Tony’s going to tip Carly a thousand dollars for this. He’s going to pay the rest of her way through college.

(He’ll run that by Pepper first. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t come off like he’s paying for sex if he does it after Carly sort of wingmans for him, even if they have previously slept together, but best to have Pepper weigh in before he pulls the trigger.)

“You deleted the picture, right?” Tony says, once Carly’s gone to place the order.

“Yeah. He was just a Badgers fan is all.” Steve’s fingers are still red, so Tony takes his hands and turns them facedown over the heat of the little candle. "Thanks," Steve says. Straight and serious now, he looks up from the candle to Tony. "What was that about?"

“It’s the company,” says Tony.

“Okay,” Steve says slowly.

“Our COO doesn’t want to explain the concept of bisexual to the board of directors. Basically.”

Steve says, “Okay,” again. He doesn’t like it. Tony doesn’t blame him.

The candle flame has gotten too hot, and Tony takes his hands away. Steve is still toasting his, turning them palm-up and palm-down, in turn.

“They’re a bunch of old shits with Cialis prescriptions and trophy wives, so when I fuck around with girls, it’s, like, they can see themselves in that, they can tell my father how they were skirt-chasers too back in the day. But if I’m with one guy ever, that means I’m gay, and they’ll get upset and we’ll lose business.”

He can hear what this must sound like, to Steve. Steve, who Tony already knows—it was practically the first thing Steve told him—has knowingly and with integrity aforethought put his football career on the line because he’s not willing to lie about himself.

“Is,” Steve says, then reconsiders and starts over. “Is that okay with you, keeping that a secret?”

“No,” says Tony. He’s saying it because it’s what Steve wants him to say, but still—it’s the first time he’s ever said it. Pepper and Rhodey get why he’s stuck with Howard, and they’ve never asked if Tony’s okay with it, because it doesn’t make any difference anyway.

“I don’t want to be a secret,” says Steve. “Not that—I mean. Just, if we were going to, um, date, I’d want to be able to tell people.”

“Yeah,” says Tony, fidgeting his fork between his middle and ring fingers. “Everybody loves to tell people they’ve fucked Tony Stark.”

Steve pulls back as if Tony’s slapped him. “That’s not what I meant. You always— It doesn’t have to be about sex all the time.”

“No,” Tony agrees, speaking more gently than he normally would, because Steve is good and the world has been good to him, and it shows. “But that’s the part that always comes back to bite me in the ass.”

Steve looks down. “Okay, that’s fair. That hasn’t been— I haven’t had to deal with that. I just meant that when I’m happy, I want to tell my friends about it.”

_When I’m happy._

Tony considers himself to be a forward-thinking guy. A futurist, is how he described himself to his classmates at MIT. A gamer-out of potential outcomes. He can look into Steve’s September-blue eyes like a crystal ball and know that this thing, this boy, this loss, is going to hurt like hell, and it’s not a question of _whether_ Tony will lose him, but _when._

Tony knows that. And he still wants Steve more than he’s wanted anything in a long time.

So he lies.

“It hasn’t been such an issue,” he says, “you know? To be worth rocking the boat over it. I’d have to—if it was going to be something—I’d have to really, really know what I was going to say to them. Can you respect that it’s kind of a new thing for me, and I haven’t figured it all out yet? And I’m working on it?”

Steve gives Tony a faintly sad smile that makes Tony feel like shit. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah. I can respect that.”

*** 

They’re at Fignori talking until midnight, when Carly has to kick them out. Ordinarily, Tony pays cash at restaurants and does it showily. He likes to do it with Obie and Howard and Maria especially, because it pisses off Obadiah but not his parents. But he uses his credit card for this one, and he leaves an extra note on the restaurant’s copy of the receipt, _Not an error,_ next to Carly’s tip.

As they’re putting on coats and wrapping scarves, Steve ducks his head and kisses Tony’s cheek and says, “Thanks. For dinner and just. This was really nice.”

Tony touches his cheek. He doesn’t know what to say.

“I didn’t want to kiss you good night outside,” Steve explains. “In case? You know? But listen, okay, I had a really nice time, and I’d like to call you again.”

“Yeah?” says Tony.

“Yeah,” says Steve, like it’s a foregone conclusion. “Maybe, um, a group thing? While you’re still figuring out stuff with your company and your dad. My friends and I do this trivia thing on Thursdays, when the team’s not traveling. We’ve got sports covered, and Peg’s really great on world history, but maybe you could round us out a little bit. If you wanted. It’s stupid but it’s fun.”

“Yeah, okay,” Tony says. He’s smiling without intending to.

Steve’s eyes, when he’s happy. “Great! Great great great. Okay.”

“But let’s actually do the phone numbers thing this time," Tony says. "Not that I mind waiting outside your locker room, but—”

Steve laughs, gets his phone out of his pocket, and hands it over. Never mind that Tony hasn’t given out his cell phone number since— He can’t remember the last time. Maybe when he hired Happy? But he dials his own phone number on Steve’s phone, and he waits to feel the vibrations of his own phone in his pocket before he ends the call.

***

As Happy’s pulling out of the parking lot, Tony gets a text. _I feel like I’m dating a superspy. Sleep good, Tony. (This is Steve.)_

“Nice evening, kiddo?” Happy says, glancing at Tony in the rearview.

Tony Stark, master of the poker face, can’t stop grinning. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, it was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m beginning to feel like this fic is accidentally sponsored by Apple. If it helps, Steve was mistaken about Tony having an iPad in the first chapter; it’s obvs. a fancypants Stark Industries tablet that’s not available on the consumer market yet. Silly Steve.
> 
> Bumped up the rating becaaaaause I wrote ahead a little bit and some of the later chapters are turning out to be slightly smuttier than I was anticipating, hope that is okay. <3


	3. Nickel defense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avengers trivia! (But first, a phone call from Maria Stark.)

Exiling Tony to this shithole in Jersey was supposed to be a lesson in humility. That’s how Obie rolled it out to him. “It won’t be so bad,” Obie said, in that voice that could make anything sound reasonable. “Less distractions for you out there.”

He meant: Less ways for you to embarrass us.

Actually, he meant _fewer_ ways, but Tony didn’t correct his grammar, as he was still hoping, at that point, to get Obadiah on his side, to get him to promise an end date. Or even just to make him say whether this was Obie’s idea or Howard’s, so Tony could start formulating an escape route.

Obie or Howard: Tony still hasn’t figured that part out. This shit about learning restraint has Howard all over it, but the thing where he has to spend half the day on the phone with SI engineers instead of making his own goddamn tweaks in his own goddamn workshop feels more like Obie. The trick is that if it’s Obie’s idea to send him here, Tony needs to work less (decreased productivity means the experiment’s a failure), and if it’s Howard’s, he needs to work more (wayward son learns moral lesson).

He’s frankly having a hard time worrying too much about that, this week.

*** 

_Hi Tony. It’s Steve. Still want to come to trivia? 6:30 tmw, King & Country. I can drive you home after._

_I did actually save yr number, you dont have to ID yrself before every text. yes still in._

*** 

When the phone rings Thursday evening as Tony’s getting ready to walk out the door, he just assumes it’s Steve. “Hi, hi,” he says into it, “I’m still coming, I still remember you—”

“Tony?”

Fuck, it’s his mother.

“Mom,” he says, caught up short. “Sorry. Hi. I thought it was work.”

“Always working,” says his mother. “You should rest, sweetheart. Take a break now and then.”

Tony loves his mother. He does. It’s not like Howard, who’s—

It’s not like Howard. He loves Maria. It’s just that she lives in this fantasy world, where if Tony works too hard it’s because he’s driven and ambitious (like Howard), and if he never takes breaks it’s because he loves the work. Where he and Howard are two peas in a pod, and sometimes they clash because they’re so much alike.

Tony doesn’t try to tell her different. She’s known him his whole life. If she wanted to know she’d know.

“I will soon,” he says. “How’s India?”

“Hot,” says his mother. “Wet. Oh, Tony, we saw the most beautiful—is this an okay time, sweetheart, are you eating dinner?”

I’m heading out. _Out where?_ With some friends. _What friends?_ And back it all goes to Howard and Obie, and on Friday he’ll get a phone call, and they’ll get Happy to run blood alcohol tests on him. And, and, and.

“No,” says Tony.

Maria tells him about India. They got a private tour of the Taj Mahal, which Tony suspects nobody has gotten since Princess Diana, and Howard nearly caused an incident by refusing to take off his shoes at the place you’re supposed to. The Taj Mahal has monkeys, not cute ones. They didn’t get to see Jaipur, they had to go straight back to Delhi. Their driver has an adorable four-year-old daughter whose name Howard can’t pronounce so they’ve been calling her Fifi, and Maria could just eat her up, she’s so precious.

“Now when you were that age,” Maria says. “What a handful, like one of those little monkeys.”

Howard and Maria tell opposite stories about Tony when he was little. Maria says he was an imp, a devil, and Howard says he was a hell of a kid, whip smart, tough as nails. Howard liked Tony better before he got old enough to disagree.

“Not like now,” Tony says. “Total washout now.”

“Oh, honey!” Maria says. She never knows when he’s kidding. “Well, I didn’t just call to chat. I wanted to let you know that Daddy and I are coming to New Jersey for Christmas!”

Tony’s brain stutters to a halt. “What?”

“To see you!” she says. “Spend the holiday together. When was the last time we did that?”

Three years ago. The year Tony slept with—what was her name?—the lobbyist, and Howard spent the entire two-week holiday seething. He wrapped a box of condoms and gave it to Tony on Christmas Day, after Maria went to bed. He said, “Stick it to any diseased whore you want. I just don’t want to hear about it on the news.”

SI fired the lobbyist. Not like they could fire Tony.

Tony’s still scrambling to recover from this news. “Mom, no, I don’t think it’s—we don’t need—”

“We can go to the city and see the shop windows and the big tree,” Maria says. “That’s what I always did when I went to Nelson. It’ll be nice to do that as a family again. We went when you were little, but you probably don’t remember.”

Yes, he doesn’t remember. “I—it’s not a good idea, Mom, I’m, I’m busy, Howard’s busy—”

“I want to have a family Christmas,” Maria says. “Your father thinks it’s a wonderful idea.”

 _I’ll bet he fucking does._ “Mom—”

“Well,” Maria says brightly, “I don’t want to keep you.” (She means that she doesn’t want to fight.) “So I’ll let you get back to work, honeypie. I’ll have Greta send you the flight details, and you and Happy can come get us at the airport. Love you.”

“Okay,” says Tony.

“Love you,” Maria repeats.

When Tony was twelve, she had a double mastectomy. He’s always known how fast she could be gone, if the cancer comes back.

He says, “I love you, too, Mom.”

*** 

Now he’s late. Now he’s late and Steve’s going to think he’s the kind of person who shows up late for things. (Which, okay, he is, but in this case he was going to _not_ be.) He’s late, and traffic’s worse than they anticipated, and and Happy hits every fucking red light between the loft and the bar. Tony is vibrating with tension.

“You talk to your parents?” Happy says, braking for a yellow light. Whenever he stops, he puts the car in neutral. It drives Tony crazy. Who drives like that?

“You can run a yellow light sometimes,” says Tony. “Like, that could be an okay thing to do.”

“They coming for Christmas?”

Tony’s eyes flick up to meet Happy’s in the rearview. He’s never sure how much Happy knows, or guesses. “Yeah,” he says neutrally.

“You can always give me a call, kid,” Happy says. His eyes don’t leave Tony’s. “I’ll come pick you up any time.”

The light turns green, and someone honks behind them, and Happy still doesn’t break eye contact.

Tony says, “You’re holding up traffic.”

Happy sighs and shifts the car back into first. He doesn’t say anything the rest of the drive.

On the outside, King and Country looks like it’s trying to be a throwback to the type of English pub that serves three kinds of beer and food with peas in it. On the inside, it’s all Nelson students and Badgers colors, and there is literally nowhere in this town that you can get a drink and not be assaulted by yellow and black. Tony can’t see Steve and his friends, and Tony’s half an hour late, and maybe they’ve already left

(What does Happy know, or think he knows?

Tony feels adrift in this noisy fucking bar, and he can’t find Steve. It’s been too long since he went out, and this isn’t the type of place he goes to anyway. He goes places with bouncers and red velvet ropes (not that there are any of those within a twenty-mile radius of Nelson).

_Oh you’re too good to mix with the common folk, Anthony?_

Someone shouts, “Hey back the fuck off,” and it’s different from the rest of the noise, louder, the kind of shout where there’s going to be a fight, and Tony tries to remember what the fuck he’s doing here, thirsty for some queer jock instead of at home working.

People crowd up to see the fight, and Tony’s pulled along with them, willy-nilly. Around one of the fake-battered-wood pillars is a whole other section of fake-half-timber walls and Badgers paraphernalia and, hey, _Steve,_ and his friends whose names Tony doesn’t remember or maybe never knew, all in a knot of arms and angry voices.

The guy Steve hauled out of Lynch’s, the quarterback, is right up in some guy’s face, yelling. The receiver who’s going to go pro (Sam?) has one hand around Steve’s wrist and the other between his shoulder blades, propelling him forward and out. They whisk right past Tony without noticing him, which is fucking typical of this whole fucking day.

He’s going to leave. He’s late anyway, and Steve didn’t see him, and he’s leaving.

A cold hand slips into Tony’s and pulls. It’s the British girl who thinks she can sing. “Hiya, I’m Peggy,” she says. “Come sit, the boys’ll be right back. It’s Tony, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, looking backward for Steve.

“Steve just needs a breather,” Peggy says. “Come on, come sit.” She settles him into a straight-backed wooden booth, the tabletop covered in empty and half-empty beer steins and blunt-tipped pencils.

“What happened?”

Peggy closes a neatly-manicured hand around the stem of her wine glass. “Just some Badgers fans being twats.”

Because Steve’s gay. “Does that happen a lot?”

“No,” Peggy says. “Half a mo, Clint’s going to end up getting his headed pounded into the pavement if someone doesn’t intercede. That boy does not know when to leave well enough alone.”

She slips out of the booth and retrieves Steve’s quarterback friend with admirably little difficulty. Clint’s obviously spoiling for the fight, but Peggy gets in between him and the three guys he’s yelling at (“his personal fucking business”) and chatters brightly to him and them, all the while shifting Clint away, putting as many chairs and people in between as possible.

“Bloody hell,” she says as she all but shoves Clint into his side of the wooden booth.

“Fuck,” Clint says, then sees Tony. “Oh—”

“Hi,” says Tony. He has never felt so fucking superfluous.

But then all the fight goes out of Clint’s face, and he’s beaming at Tony. “Hey, you came. You came!”

“Clint,” says Peggy pointedly.

“No, no, this is great!” Clint says. He shoves a beer mug at Tony. “Hey, drink this, I haven’t touched it, and I’ll have Sam get me another one next time he goes up. Hey, hi, I’m Clint Barton. You’re the famous Tony!”

 _Famous like Stark Industries, or famous like Steve’s talked about me?_ Tony wants to ask. “That’s me,” he says. “You’re the quarterback, right?”

“Sensitive topic,” Peggy says, squinching up her face in a way that even Tony can see is a playful jab at Clint.

“Damn right I’m the quarterback,” Clint says, to Tony but at Peggy. “Hey, you came!”

“I came!” says Tony. And because Clint seems like that kind of guy, and because Tony doesn’t have the wherewithal to deal with this—whatever this is—sober, he chugs the beer Clint just gave him.

Clint whoops. Peggy, after rolling her eyes to show that she’s above all this, applauds when Tony finally puts the beer stein down. “Frightfully manly of you, darling,” she says. “Though it does leave you sans drink. Shall I get another?”

“Me too, Pegs?” Clint says.

“Yes, okay, and then you owe me. Behave!” And away she goes. Tony is sort of baffled by all this giving him drinks. 

“I might go check on Steve,” Tony says.

Clint puts a hand down on the table. “Hey, no, he won’t—”

Tony raises an eyebrow. He does this fluidly and easily (after many hours of rehearsing in the mirror the summer before MIT), and he knows exactly how crushing it is.

“Let Sam deal with it,” Clint says. “Steve’s not going to want you to— He’ll feel better if you don’t see him upset about it. You know? It’s just some shit. He’s good.”

“Some shit,” Tony repeats, not shifted out of elegant contempt mode.

“Yeah, some asshole came up and asked him about a friend of his that died. People just come right up to you, you know?” Clint taps his fingers on a couple of different drinks before selecting one to drink out of. Hygiene first with this crowd, apparently.

“Yeah, I know,” Tony says.

Clint looks up at him. “No, hey, I said the thing wrong. Sam’d’ve done it better. He was just in this plane, this little plane, Steve and his friend, the summer after graduation, and something went wrong and it just—” He dives his hand toward the table. “Into the water.”

So, not the gay thing. “Jesus.”

“Yeah, I mean. It was a while ago, Steve’s good. It’s just not the kind of shit you want to start reliving at a bar, you know? In front of your hot new guy friend?”

Tony nods. “He’s coming back, though, right?”

“Hey hey hey,” Clint says, pitching his voice louder and up. “Steve-o! We got you something while you were taking a piss!”

Tony turns around, and there’s Sam, clearing a path, and Steve behind him. He looks a little pale, but his eyes go soft with delight when he sees Tony. It still does something strange to Tony’s heart. Steve slides into the booth next to Tony and says loudly, “Sorry, genius, you’re getting squished in here,” pressing close to him while Sam scoots in on Steve’s other side and starts bickering with Clint over drink ownership.

Under the table, Steve puts his hand in Tony’s. “You came,” he says into Tony’s ear.

“Yeah, I should’ve texted when I knew I was going to be late. My mom called,” which in Tony’s opinion should be enough explanation for anyone. He shoves that thought, and all thoughts relating to Christmas, out of his mind. Steve’s hand is warm even though he’s just come in from outside (gloves? Superhuman circulation?), and Tony can’t stop thinking of all the places he wants those hands to touch.

“That’s okay,” Steve says, still quietly, just for Tony.

“God, you’re warm,” says Tony, and Steve smiles.

“Beers for all!” proclaims Peggy. Tony wants his beer but also sort of wants to kill her for interrupting. “Budge up, Clint, or I’m giving yours to Sam. Tony, my love, I didn’t know what you’d like so I got you my favorite. If you don’t like it, don’t be polite, just shove it over and I'll have it.”

“She calls everyone my love,” Steve explains. “Cause she’s British.”

Clint snorts. “Hey, good work clearing that up, Rogers.”

Steve balls up a napkin and throws it at him. Right between the eyes.

“Hey hey,” says Sam, “so maybe Steve oughta take over throwing the—”

“Can it, or I’m throwing all next week’s passes to Coakley.”

Steve whispers, “Coakley’s the tight end,” and Tony chokes on the beer he’s drinking.

“Come on,” he says, loud enough that the others look over. He feels better now, warmer from the alcohol and the heat of Steve’s body, and Steve’s fingers laced through Tony’s, and he wants Steve’s friends to like him. “Okay, you guys, I’m pretty convinced Steve’s fucking with me. Is there such a thing as a tight end in football, or is he taking advantage of my youthful inexperience?”

Sam cracks up, Clint clinks his drink against Tony’s, and Peggy says, “Tight ends are very real.”

“Youthful inexperience,” snorts Clint.

Steve kicks him under the table, and Tony laughs out loud. “You are the least subtle,” he says to Steve, leaning against him. “The least. I saw that.”

“Oh, darling, it’s not about you,” Peggy says. “Steve just likes to abuse poor Clint.”

In a sportscaster voice, Sam says, “Badgers defense still strong, offense struggles after kneecapping of key players by disgruntled cornerback. Barton, did you seriously drink the other half my beer and now you’re working on another one for you and you didn’t get me one? Is that what we’re doing, man?”

“I’ll buy the next round,” Tony offers.

“Fuck off, you’re a guest,” says Sam. “I’ll get it, who else needs something?”

“I do,” says Peggy, which, although she just sat down with the last one, is true. Tony guesses it’s to do with being British. “I’ll come with, those lot serve the girls faster, sexist pricks.”

“So did I miss trivia?” Tony says, as Peggy and Sam disappear into the throng.

“Yep,” says Clint.

“Just the first half,” says Steve.

The second half is only two rounds, as it turns out, and Tony’s not stupendously helpful in either of them. The first round’s about Thanksgiving, and he knows that “Jingle Bells” is the Christmas carol originally intended for the Thanksgiving holiday, but that's his only contribution. Peggy's the one who knows which president made Thanksgiving a national holiday (“Pegs, you can’t just say Lincoln for every president question, we’ve had a bunch of other presidents”), and Steve comes up with the name of the Indian tribe that had the meal with the Pilgrims. The whole table apart from Tony knows which two NFL teams always host games on Thanksgiving Day.

By the second round, they’re all pretty drunk. Even Steve, who’s the designated driver, has gotten giggly by proximity. Sam keeps howling answers at the top of his lungs, and Peggy insists that their team name has to be “the Skylar Sisters,” which appears to be a joke, although no one but Steve seems to gets it, and he might just be being polite.

Nobody will let Tony pay for drinks.

“Be our guest, be our guest,” Sam sings, which sets off Peggy, and she gets through two verses before Clint and Sam sweep her away to help them carry another round of drinks back to the table.

“They’re pretty close to done,” Steve says. He hasn’t let go of Tony’s hand this whole time. Now that the other three are gone, he angles his body a little, so he can look at Tony properly. “Is this okay?” he says. “My friends and—all this?”

“Hey,” says Tony, “I know you spend all your time making your shoulders look like that, but for the rest of us, this is a one-horse town pretty much. I haven’t had any fun since I got here until I met you.”

Steve smiles at him. “I’m glad you came out,” he says. It takes a second for him to hear it. “Oh! No. No no no. I meant, to trivia! I’m glad you came out with us to get drinks. Would, um—I mean, I have to get these guys home after the next round, they all have to be up early, but I was going to just watch the end of the Dolphins game in my dorm if, um.”

“Yes,” Tony says.

“Yeah?” says Steve, curving his bottom lip downward in that way that Tony fucking loves. He’s about ninety-percent sure that it’s what Steve’s mouth does when he wants to keep a smile in.

“Yes,” and to make it sound like not too much of a come-on (Tony truly does not know whether that’s what Steve intends with this talk of going back to his dorm), Tony adds, “You can be my football Yoda.”

Steve can be his anything he damn well wants.

On the drive home, they let Tony have shotgun, even though he really does try to give it up to Peggy. They drop Peggy off first, and Sam walks her in, even though it’s not even ten. Then Clint, at a dorm near the quad that looks like the set of a slasher flick. Steve and Sam are in one of the dorms at the edge of campus, the newer ones with—Steve explains—newer facilities but smaller rooms.

“But that’s okay, right, buddy?” he says to Sam. “We’ve got it set up.”

“Yep,” Sam agrees. “Yep yep yep yep. Go Dolphins.”

“Nope,” says Steve. “We hate the Dolphins. Go Eagles.”

“We hate the Eagles,” Sam points out.

Steve sighs deeply. “Yes, we do, Sam. We do indeed. It’s a tough one.”

When they get out of the car, he takes Tony’s hand again, and Tony lets him do it. Steve unlocks the door of his dorm, then his hallway, then his room, without unlacing his fingers from Tony’s. When Sam’s back is to them both, Steve brings up their joined hands and kisses Tony’s knuckles.

Fuck Howard. Fuck Obie. Fuck the company. Tony wants this.

Steve and Sam’s set-up is that they have two bunk beds, which from the sound of it they use interchangeably (“don’t tell Peggy”), and the top bunk’s for sleeping and the bottom bunk’s for working.

“Watching football counts as working,” Sam explains. “Investment in the future.” They straighten up the bottom bunk and turn the TV on and the lights off. The third quarter has just started, and the Dolphins are ahead.

“Ugh,” says Steve.

“You don’t want _Philly_ to win this, man,” Sam says.

“I don’t want _Miami_ to win this.”

Steve sits in the middle of the bottom bunk, and Tony curls up next to him, their shoulders touching.

“Cold?” Steve says. He leans over Tony and pulls a blanket over his legs, and it probably says something shitty about Tony’s life that this is the closest thing to being tucked in that he has in his memory. Tony wants to tell Steve he doesn’t have to do that, take care of him, except to Steve it’s nothing. He’s already past it, explaining to Tony which team they’re rooting for (white) and why (Chip Kelly’s not so bad).

Sam makes a skeptical noise.

“He’s not!” Steve protests. “Okay, look, Tony. White’s on offense, that’s the Eagles. Do you know about first downs?”

“I know it means you did something good,” Tony offers.

“Means _I_ did something good,” says Sam. “Your boy Rogers is only good for—”

“Interceptions,” Tony suggests. “Shoulders.” He rests his head on Steve’s.

Without comment, Steve puts his arm around Tony, and Tony huddles closer, warmth seeping into him. “Okay,” Steve says. “See, they just got a first down. That means they get another four tries to move the ball ten yards closer to the goal. And if they do that, they get another four tries to get the next ten yards. If they don’t get it in four tries, they have to punt.”

“I need to pee,” announces Sam. He makes the maximum amount of noise Tony can imagine from a person leaving a room.

Philly scores.

“Go white,” says Tony. He’s a little sleepy. Steve is very warm.

He blinks, and there’s a commercial for a better kind of vacuum. He thinks, _I could make a better vacuum than that._

He blinks, and the Dolphins are up 31 to 28—

He blinks—

*** 

Tony wakes up, and he’s warm. It’s odd. Usually Tony has a hard time getting warm, especially at night, but Steve is like a solid wall of heat, and he’s still curled up close against Steve’s body, tucked into the curve of Steve’s arm. “Steve,” Tony says.

Steve inhales deeply, the way people do as they’re waking up. When he looks at Tony in the darkness, his eyes are soft, soft, soft. “We fell asleep,” he says. He’s not whispering, exactly, but his voice is quiet and hoarse from sleep. A voice for the dark.

“Yeah,” says Tony. He shifts his right knee a little, little bit, sliding it over Steve’s thigh, an invitation. “I think Sam ditched us for a more interesting crowd.”

“More interesting than you?” Steve says, and he kisses him.

 _This is how Steve Rogers kisses,_ Tony thinks. He feels stupidly honored to get to find this out, to have Steve kiss him first, to have Steve want to.

Steve kisses Tony like he’s fragile, ephemeral. He kisses like he wants Tony to know that he can get away. His mouth doesn’t ask for anything, and his hands aren’t keeping him.

When Steve pulls back—only a few inches, their mouths are still so close—he presses a palm flat against Tony’s chest. Tony’s heartbeat has gone nuts with the proximity, with everything he wants. “You stopped,” Tony says.

Steve smooths Tony’s hair on one side, and Tony turns his face into Steve’s hand. “I really like you,” Steve says. “I really really really like you.”

“Don’t say but.”

“Wasn’t gonna.”

Tony tries to say, _I like you too,_ but he chokes on the words. How does Steve do that so easily? “It’s mutual, eighteen.”

“I like it when you call me eighteen,” Steve says. He pulls Tony back to kiss him again. It’s hungrier this time—Tony was starting to wonder if Steve even—but Steve tugs at Tony’s wrist, up and over, until Tony’s straddling him, and yes, Steve is very definitely here for this.

But when Tony reaches down for Steve’s cock, Steve takes his hand away. “This,” he says, into Tony’s mouth, “okay?”

Sometimes Steve seems so young, even though he’s two years older. Was Tony ever so young that he just wanted to kiss, just that? Because Steve pulls Tony horizontal, and they are lying beside each other, inside arms squished into weird positions, and Steve is kissing Tony like that’s the only thing there is.

It’s sort of nice.

It’s really nice.

With no end game, Tony just explores. He discovers that if he rubs Steve’s scalp, Steve will tilt his head, pressing backward into Tony’s hands like a happy cat, and that will give Tony access to Steve’s throat. If he kisses Steve’s throat, Steve will make a noise that is surprised and a little needy and it is the best noise. If he takes his mouth away from Steve’s, Steve will kiss any part of him that he can reach: forehead, fingers, ears. Like he can’t get enough.

If he kisses Steve for longer than the game goes on, Steve won’t notice that the Dolphins won after all, because he’s not even glancing at it anymore, he’s wrapped up in Tony.

If he kisses Steve for long enough, he’ll forget what it feels like to be cold.

If he kisses Steve forever, he’ll never have to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Peggy doesn’t know how to spell Schuyler, and your lovely comments make my heart sing. It’s goodbye unicorns in the next chapter (I think—this keeps getting way longer than I intended!), so stay tuned!


	4. Run Up the Middle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanksgiving in the city!

Steve sees Tony every day for the next week. By Monday, Sam has to tell him to shut up about Tony unless he has something substantive to report. Steve wants to say, “But he likes me. He likes _me,_ ” only he knows that’s exactly the kind of thing Sam’s had enough of him saying.

If you asked Steve what he wanted in a guy, he’d have described Bucky, and frankly, apart from both having brown hair, Bucky and Tony are just about as opposite to each other as they could be. It’s good, probably. If he could still afford to see his old therapist, he’s pretty sure she’d tell him it’s good. Try new things.

Tony Stark is the best new thing Steve has ever tried.

Peggy, who is an underappreciated genius, points out to Steve that the football team would most likely be amenable to permitting a potential major donor to attend football practice. When Steve suggests this to Tony, he smiles like a tractor beam.

“You’d want me there?” he says.

“I want you everywhere,” Steve says in the low growly voice that makes him feel like a sex fraud (everything makes him feel like a sex fraud, compared to Tony), but it always makes Tony pounce on him and kiss him.

They haven’t had sex. Partly this is due to lack of opportunity—Tony’s jumpy about having Steve over at his place, for reasons Steve doesn’t fully get, and Sam and Steve keep the same hours so it’s rare that Steve has his dorm room to himself. Partly it’s that Steve hasn’t ever before, and he wants it and he’s nervous, and he tends to err on the side of not asking for things he wants. Partly it’s because Tony is _so weird_ about it. He always acts a little bit like he’s expecting Steve to sell him out to the tabloids, but it ratchets up to eleven as soon as sex comes up.

Apart from that first night when they met, Steve hasn’t googled Tony at all. It’s an invasion of privacy, and he figures Tony’s had enough of that in his life. And he’s better off not knowing, isn’t he, the names and faces of the people who got Tony’s head in this messed-up place. For all he knows, those people are still in Tony’s life in some capacity, and if Steve ever meets them, he doesn’t want to be biting back the urge to hit them.

“Are you going to see your parents tomorrow?” Steve asks on Wednesday, as they’re walking back from practice together.

Tony angles his head up at Steve, questioning.

“Thanksgiving?”

“Oh!” Tony laughs, the ugly, cynical laugh that Steve hates. “No. God. What a terrible idea. They’re coming here for Christmas, and that’s going to be enough of a nightmare without tossing Thanksgiving on top of it. What do you and your mom do?”

“She,” says Steve. He thought Tony already knew this. Sometimes it seems like everyone in the world knows Steve’s business. “She died. I thought I’d told you.”

“What?” Tony says. He’s stopped walking, and Steve swings around to face him.

“Yeah, I—I thought I’d said. When we talked about my dad. My mom died when I was sixteen. Cystic fibrosis. That’s—” _Why I moved in with Bucky’s family,_ if that weren’t a whole kettle of fish Steve doesn’t want to get into in the middle of the Nelson quad.

“Shit, Steve, I’m really really sorry.”

“Thanks.”

“God,” Tony says, “you really have a cartoonishly tragic backstory, don’t you?”

A laugh sputters out of Steve. “That’s a horrible thing to say.”

“Saying horrible things is why you like me.”

“Yep, one of many reasons.” Steve wants to hug him. Tony gets nervous talking about Steve liking him, or him liking Steve. Another of the many, many things Tony’s weird about.

“I mean, if you’re on your own,” Tony says. “Would you be interested at all in spending the day with me? I could get Happy—my driver—to take us into New York, and we could, maybe, see a show tonight, get a hotel, have fancy dinner tomorrow? I could have you back by Thursday evening.”

Steve cocks his head. “Um, the hotel thing—”

“Separate rooms, hotshot. I could book under a fake name, but even with that, there’s credit card charges, blabby concierges—” Tony catches Steve’s eye. “Hey, you’re the one who wants to wait.”

Wait to have sex, not wait to be out. But then, Tony knows that.

They drive into New York that evening. Tony has a limo, which is black, and a professional driver, whose name is Happy. Tony puts up the privacy barrier so he and Steve can make out in the back seat.

Kissing Tony is one of the best things that’s ever happened to Steve. Before Bucky died, they kissed a few times, anxiously, fast, and quickly over. Bucky was scared that dating would ruin their friendship, and Steve was so in love with Bucky he’d have taken anything, any scrap that Bucky was willing to give him. He never had this with Bucky, this, this leisurely exploration with lips and tongues and fingers, kissing gently to start, and then harder, harder, until he and Tony are both gasping with it. How impossibly _good_ it feels. The things Tony says to him.

Tony takes them to _Hamilton._ He says it’s the nerdiest thing he could think of so he knew Steve would dig it. Since Steve knows how hard it is to get tickets to _Hamilton,_ he suspects that Tony’s covering up having solicited Peggy’s feedback and then put in substantial effort to get them their orchestra seats. Or he just picked the hardest show to get tickets to. Either of the two possibilities seems characteristic of Tony.

At intermission, Tony claims he’s going to the bathroom and comes back with a bag that contains (Steve finds out in the limo afterward) a _Hamilton_ hat, a shirt that says, inexplicably, #YayHamlet, and two copies of the cast recording.

“This shirt is preposterously too large,” Steve says.

“For _me,_ ” says Tony. “The shirt’s for you. The hat’s for me. If we have matching apparel for a show we saw together, it’s too gay. Not for the shareholders,” he adds. “For my own personal aesthetic.”

“You bought the CD.”

Tony climbs on his lap. “Shut up,” he says.

“You want to listen to it again.”

“Shut up.”

“You liiiiiiiiked it.” Steve dodges Tony’s mouth, and Tony starts laughing helplessly, and then his cell phone rings.

“No, come on—” Steve says.

Tony answers it. “Tony Stark.” He sounds—Steve hates how his voice sounds. He hates everything about the version of Tony Stark that belongs to Stark Industries. He wants the version of Tony that belongs (even if just a little bit) to him.

“No. No, I’m—yeah, I just—” Tony glances at Steve. “You said you wanted me to be serious about the company. We’re investing in—I’m doing the work Uncle Obie sent me, and then—it’s Thanksgiving. No, it’s not an excu— You know I’ve been trying to take an interest in Mom’s, in, in her legacy with Nelson.”

He rolls his eyes at Steve over the top of his cell phone, and removes himself from Steve’s lap. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. We’re already nicely entrenched in the areas of interest to Stark Industries, but wouldn’t it be great to—”

When Steve’s mother told him his father had been killed, she wasn’t crying. At first Steve didn’t understand what she was even saying. His father was a hero. A brave fighter. Brave fighters didn’t get killed. They triumphed over all the odds.

Tony’s voice has gotten lower. Like there’s any way for Steve not to hear what he’s saying, when they’re sitting a foot away from each other. “Because I don’t _live_ in Ohio, and Ohio’s not where Mom— Well, fine, you pick the football program where you want me to find a deserving Little Nell, and I’ll pack all my shit and head out there. But for the time being, I’ve got a camera-ready orphan who’s going to be working two jobs this spring to pay for books. Are you seriously—”

Camera-ready orphan. Steve looks down at his hands. Is that what he is? When Tony comes out to his company, when people know about Steve, is that what they’ll see when they look at him? Not football first, but tragedy?

“Nobody but you gives a shit where I invest my discretionary charitable funds.” Tony brings his legs up to his chest, making himself small against the side of the car. “If you want me to cancel it, I’ll try, but it’s going to make SI look like an asshole. Pepper had to be pretty persuasive to get them— I’m not manip— I’m—”

Steve can’t imagine ever speaking to his father that way.

“Okay. Yeah. I’ll check with Obie next time.”

Tony hangs up the phone. He doesn’t look at Steve, or uncurl himself from the car door, where he has threaded one hand through the underside of the arm rest.

“Is everything okay?” Steve asks.

“Yeah.”

“Is your dad upset about you coming to practice?”

“No. I got a box for the next two Badgers games, and he’s pissed about the money. It doesn’t matter. He’s picking a fight.”

“You—” Not trusting his voice to get a whole sentence out, Steve swallows.

Tony is all tight shoulders and defended eyes. “It’s just so I’ll have something to do, get me out of the house. I was going to see if Peggy wanted to share. If you’re going to be pissy about it, can you wait until we’re at the hotel so I don’t have to—”

“You’re coming to my games?”

Tony doesn’t answer. He’s staring at his hand and the car door. Not sure whether this is the right thing, Steve scoots sideways on the seat and nuzzles into Tony, cupping his neck with his left arm. He waits for Tony to shrug him off, and Tony doesn’t.

“You’re coming to my games?” Steve says again, softly.

“Yeah, eighteen, I’m coming to your stupid games.” Tony lets go of the door to put his hand on Steve’s cheek, and Steve kisses his palm.

“S’really nice,” says Steve.

The privacy barrier slides down, and Steve and Tony jump apart. Mostly Steve does the jumping. Tony, Steve suspects, is used to being caught cuddling (and stuff) by his driver. The driver (Happy) says, “We’re just about at the hotel. You want to go in together, or let Mr. Rogers walk a block?”

Tony swallows.

“I don’t mind walking,” Steve says.

He doesn’t mind walking. He minds being a secret.

When he gets out, he’s swamped with nostalgia for this place, this city, at the holidays. As a kid, he and his mom went all over the city, looked at everything. “Looking’s free,” she used to say. So Steve doesn’t get lost in the Village, with its twisty, unnumbered streets. He walks to the hotel slow, enjoying it, all the things that have changed since the last time he was there.

The hotel isn’t as fancy as Steve was afraid it would be, but it’s fancier than Steve’s raggedy backpack. He’s nervous, as he checks in, that the concierge isn’t going to have his name, or that he’s going to have to provide a credit card to get his room key. But it all works fine. The concierge smiles at him, and the elevator has an impossible number of floors, and Steve’s room has the softest bed and the most pillows he has probably ever seen.

After their first date, Steve made an internal rule: Whoever does the inviting pays, and Steve’s going to invite Tony to one thing for every one thing Tony invites him to. This seemed reasonable when he discussed it with Sam and Clint and Peggy, and reasonable when Steve was paying everyone back for the drinks they bought Tony at trivia. It seems less reasonable now that this date is probably costing upwards of a thousand dollars, and that’s before whatever they’re going to do tomorrow.

He should have said no, maybe. No to the show, at least. At least no to the hotel.

It’s just that he’s really tired of being alone on the holidays.

As he’s considering the ethics of all this, the phone by his bed rings. He lies down on the bed (it’s _so comfortable_ ) and picks it up. “This is Steve Rogers,” he says.

Tony’s chuckle raises goosebumps on Steve’s arms. “Hey there, Steve Rogers. This is Tony Stark. You remember me, from—”

“Shut up, smartass.”

“No, it’s just, who else would possibly be calling you on the hotel phone that you—”

“I thought it might be downstairs! Calling to—I don’t know, check.”

“Check what?” Tony says. He’s laughing. Steve loves Tony’s laugh, even when it’s happening at his expense.

“Did you just call to make fun of me?”

“No. What are you wearing?”

“Tony—”

“No, I wanted to— Look, on the phone before, I said photogenic orphan.”

Camera-ready orphan. Actually. Steve chews on the skin next to his thumbnail and doesn’t say anything.

Tony sighs. “I don’t think of you like that. I mean—you are photogenic, and you are an orphan, but the way it sounded when I said it, that’s not how I think about you.”

“I know,” says Steve. (He does know, mostly, sort of.)

“Have you heard of code-switching?”

“Nope.”

“So,” Tony says, “it’s the name for when you switch between different ways of talking. Like maybe you speak English at home and Chinese to your parents. Or you cuss in front of your friends at trivia night, but you wouldn’t cuss in front of your mother.”

“Huh,” says Steve. “I didn’t know they had a name for that.” His thumb starts to bleed on the side. It’s a bad habit.

“My father mostly speaks asshole businessman. So—I grew up knowing how to speak that too. And when I talk to him, it’s like, that’s the only thing he’ll understand. If I just said I have these new friends on the football team, he’d want to know— He’d have questions. If I say it like you’re some charity case, like I’m fixing you up with scholarship money, that makes sense to him. No more questions.”

“Are you fixing me up with scholarship money?”

Tony sighs. “I would if I thought you’d take it. Would you take it?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

Steve says, tentatively, “You could answer the questions.”

“I just—”

“No, your dad’s. If you said you have new friends on the football team, and he asked you questions. You could answer them. I know you—you aren’t close, but maybe, he might like to hear about your life. Who you’re making friends with.” _Who you’re dating._

“Just,” Tony says. “God, you’re sweet.”

Steve wrinkles his nose. “You don’t have to patronize me.”

“I’m not. Eighteen. I wouldn’t.”

There’s a pause.

“I like it when you call me eighteen,” Steve says. When the guys do it, teammates, it’s just like all the other dumb crap they say to each other at practice and in the locker rooms.

When Tony says it, it’s like Steve has somebody he belongs to.

“With my father,” Tony says, “what you don’t— He wants me to be all these different things. He wants me to be a super genius who improves on his designs and makes things that are better than he’s ever thought of, but he wants me to also never ever disagree with him. I’m supposed to have friends, but only the right kind of friends, which is this constantly moving target, and I’m not supposed to have so many of them that I don’t get my work done. I’m supposed to be an iconoclast like him but I’m not supposed to say anything my mother doesn’t like. It’s just—it’s fucking impossible to satisfy him.”

“Oh,” says Steve, stupidly.

Tony lets out an explosive sigh. “Okay, too much. I’m hanging up.”

“Just,” says Steve, because he can’t not say it. “Just—maybe try. Talking to him. You might regret it later if you don’t. I’d give anything to be able to talk to my dad one more time.” _Tell him about you._

“Yeah, I’ll think about it,” Tony says. His voice has changed. It hasn’t shifted back to that corporate voice, the smooth one that belongs to Howard Stark and Stark Industries, the one that called Steve a camera-ready orphan. But it’s closer. Shades of Stark Industries. Steve doesn’t know how to get the real Tony, his Tony, back. A yawn comes upon him like a visitation.

“I’ll let you get to sleep,” says Tony.

“Okay,” says Steve. “You hang up first.”

Tony laughs out loud. “You’re such—” And there he is back again. Completely himself. “I will hang up first, and then you’re going to feel bereft.”

“Joke’s on you, genius, I don’t know what bereft means. Hang up.”

“You.” Tony’s still laughing, or at least, the laugh’s still in his voice. The sound of it makes Steve feel the goofy, stupid way that Sam’s tired of witnessing.

“I will if you tell me what bereft means.”

“It means sad. Hang up and go to bed.”

“Okay, together.”

They hang up on three.

At least, Steve does. He hopes Tony did as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is why don't post WIPs, kids. "Oh, it'll just be a real quick next chapter" & the next thing you know you're at like 8000 words for two chapters and they're still in separate cities. That is my bad, and I freely admit it. Steve and Tony won't stop talking is the thing! Everything would have worked out according to plan if it weren't for these meddling kids!
> 
> Steve loves the _Hamilton_ cast recording, and so should you.


	5. Unnecessary Roughness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A visit from the Starks. TW for physical abuse (not that much of it), hints of past abuse, & some genuinely bullshit rationalizations.

What Tony can’t get over, can’t fully wrap his head around, is how _easy_ it is with Steve. Granted, he’s lying to him every time he talks about coming out to his company and the future in which the two of them will be able to have dinner in the main rooms of fancy restaurants and it won’t matter who sees them. But it’s not a lie for the reason Pepper would say, which is that Tony has no intention of telling his father he’s dating a boy (although he doesn’t). It’s a lie because Steve won’t be around long enough for it to matter.

Actually, that’s sort of the problem. How easy it is, to spend time with Steve, and to pretend that he, Tony Stark, is normal and trustworthy and dateable.

If he’s not careful, he’ll fool himself too.

Because Steve holds his hand every chance he gets, rubbing a thumb over Tony’s knuckles. Because he sends stupid pictures to Tony’s cell phone, on days when they’re not able to see each other. Because when Steve gets back from his game the weekend after Thanksgiving, and finds Tony sitting outside his dorm room waiting, he bends down and kisses Tony’s mouth, like they have been together forever, and he says, “Are _you_ a sight for sore eyes.” Because he insists on paying for Tony every other date, even if it means they’re just eating sandwiches on a picnic blanket in the ag center’s greenhouse because that’s all Steve can afford.

It’s like dating the way you read about it in books or see it in movies. Tony assumes. He doesn’t see that many movies, or read that many books, these days. His time is occupied with work and figuring out why he’s in fucking New Jersey (that part less, now) and Steve, and Steve, and Steve.

Steve, who wants to wait to have sex until they know each other a little better.

Tony’s fine with it.

“ _Really,_ ” says Pepper at their biweekly brunch. She draws out the E to indicate that she won’t tolerate bullshit.

“It’s called respecting his boundaries.” Tony is sort of breathless, telling all this to Pepper. Because Pepper knows everything, she knows about Ty, but because Pepper also hates Ty, they don’t discuss him much. So this is the first time, really, that Tony’s told her about someone he’s slept with more than once.

Except, of course, he hasn’t slept with Steve.

 _Seen_ more than once. In a date setting. Seen in a date setting or slept with more than once.

“I was not aware,” Pepper says, looking down her pointy nose, “that you knew the meaning of the words ‘respecting’ and ‘boundaries.’”

“Pep,” says Tony. “Come on. I know the meaning of all the words. Genius?”

Pepper gives him her measuring look. “You seem happy,” she says.

 _I am happy._ Nobody (well, maybe Steve) would say those words aloud. They are too obvious a jinx. “So sue me.”

“I meant like indoctrinated into a cult happy,” says Pepper, which is exactly why Tony likes her. Never one to force an emotional confession, his friend Pepper.

And, God, apart from anything else, Steve on the football field is a fucking wet dream. He loses every trace of gentleness and turns into someone, something, else—fast and twisty and lethal. Most of Tony’s newly acquired football knowledge is about why Steve makes an incredible corner. (It’s about learning which routes the quarterbacks and wide receivers on the opposite team favor, so you can dedicate less attention to keeping track of where the receiver is and more to keeping track of when the quarterback’s going to throw the football.)

If he’s being honest, he waited outside Steve’s room after the Northwestern game so Steve would fuck him. When he thinks about all that ferocity and strength and coordination, his for the taking—

Anyway.

Steve wants to wait.

“Because,” is what he says when Tony—trying not to beg—asks why. “We hardly know each other.”

“Never stopped me before,” says Tony. He’s twitchy and impatient; Howard and Maria are coming on the sixteenth, and who the fuck knows what will happen then. He wants to have this, Steve, before then. He fucking dreams about it. Unwrapping Steve like the best present he’ll ever have, watching him come night after night in Tony’s hands and mouth and ass.

Steve doesn’t ask about Tony’s past lovers (probably already knows about the women; that’s a matter of public record), and Tony doesn’t want to explain about Ty, so he doesn’t bring up the subject of Steve’s history either. Lacking further information, he assumes the kid who died was Steve’s boyfriend. He guesses that was pretty much it for Steve. True love or nothing, probably, with this guy.

(He feels shivery, thinking of the word _love,_ which is stupid for a lot of reasons, not least of which is that Steve’s not going to be moving in a love direction the longer he knows Tony. More like a, what? A tolerance direction. Tony makes a good first impression, but he’s not so great in the long term.)

“Come on,” he says, cajoling, in Steve’s dorm after the Michigan game. Sam’s out celebrating, and Steve’s lying on top of Tony sucking bruises into his neck, and neither of them is wearing a shirt, and Tony’s so hard it fucking hurts. “A game well played calls for a blow job, doesn’t it?”

Steve props himself up on an elbow and looks down at Tony. “It doesn’t always have to be a transaction,” he says.

“Aw, eighteen,” says Tony. He takes two of Steve’s fingers into his mouth and swirls his tongue around them, keeping eye contact. Steve is blushing down to his shoulders. “I wasn’t calling you a whore, I just—”

Steve’s breath catches.

Before Tony has a chance to figure out if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, fucking Sam comes rattling the key in the lock, and they have to break apart and put their shirts back on like Sam doesn’t know exactly what they’ve been doing.

“Want to come back to mine?” Tony asks.

“Cause you’re not staying here,” Sam puts in. He’s hanging up his coat in the closet.

Steve’s eyes are huge in the dim light of the computer screen. “I,” he says, stuttering over the word. “Better not.”

It hurts more than it should. Tony doesn’t trust himself to speak, what he’ll say to Steve if he opens his mouth. He collects his stuff instead—glasses, wallet, phone, coat—and doesn’t look at Steve. On his way out, he hisses, “You played for shit today,” at Sam, and he can see both Sam and Steve turn around, eyebrows up, faces surprised, but Tony is already gone.

 

_Please don’t talk that way to my friends_

_oh didn’t anyone tell you? I’m an asshole._

 

Bound to happen eventually.

On Sunday, Tony troubleshoots his miniaturized heat-seeker. Back when he had a real workshop and he could build things himself and take them apart and put them together a hundred times, he was proud of this little guy. Now if he wants to make any changes (it poops out if you get it up to a certain velocity, and Tony needs to nudge that number up higher if the thing’s going to do any good), he has to talk the tech guys in Malibu through it, step by step.

“This isn’t how I fucking work,” he said to Obie.

“So learn how to work this way,” said Obie.

Sometimes Obie and Howard talk like they’re reading out of some Tough Love handbook with a defensive “PhD” in the author’s name on the cover and spine. If Tony ever finds a book like that in one of Obie’s apartments, he’s setting it on fire.

 

_hey Tony are you mad at me? I miss you ;)_

_just busy_

 

On Monday, Howard and Maria’s flight arrives in under forty-eight hours. Tony wants to have something to show Howard, but he can’t focus. Nothing he thinks of makes any sense, and he spills coffee on three separate pairs of pants before giving up and working in his boxers and undershirt.

Monday night, he gets drunk. Hideously. It’s his last hurrah before Howard gets here. He drinks his whiskey from the bottle and plays his music at top volume and doesn’t text Steve. At some point Happy comes up the stairs and pounds on the door to the loft for Tony to shut up, and Tony ignores him. Happy doesn’t have a key. Howard is coming, and nothing’s ever fine, and Tony’s sick in the bathroom and he feels like shit and he washes the taste of vomit down with more whiskey because why the fuck not.

 

_i always fukc up everyhtnig_

_Tony, are you okay?_

_hey, Tony, you don’t have to talk to me, but can you just let me know you’re all right?_

_do you need me to come over?_

 

On Tuesday, Tony staggers downstairs with sunglasses on to get the _Times_ from his lawn, and Steve is sitting on the cold concrete of his building’s stoop, knees drawn up to his chest, shivering.

“Tony!” he says, scrambling to his feet.

Tony looks up at him stupidly.

“I got your paper,” says Steve. “Can I come in? It’s really cold.” 

Tony thinks: _I didn’t know you could be cold._ “Okay,” he says dubiously, stepping aside to let Steve past him and up the stairs.

The loft’s a mess. Tony wishes he didn’t have to see it through Steve’s eyes: Papers everywhere, dirty laundry everywhere, his stupid, shitty little bot imperfectly settled into its charging station. Where Sam and Steve’s dorm walls are covered with whiteboards with Xs and Os drawn all over them, and posters relating to football, and Badgers gear, Tony’s walls are bare. It’s like nobody lives here. If he’d known Steve was coming over, he’d have cleaned up. He’d have swept for hidden microphones, just to be on the safe side.

(It’s only paranoid if they’re not really spying on you.)

When Steve turns to face Tony, his face looks all wrong, the planes of it, barren and angled. Tony wants to go to him, touch him, smooth the sadness out of his mouth and eyebrows and cheekbones, except that Tony’s the one who put it there. Steve goes to the kitchen area and sets the newspaper down on the peninsula. Shrugging off his coat, he takes the coffee pot out of the coffeemaker and looks around for a mug.

“In the dishwasher,” Tony says. He has no idea what the fuck this is supposed to be.

Steve opens the dishwasher and gets out one of the Stark Industries mugs there. Since this doesn’t involve him, Tony stops watching—he’s not that desperate for Steve’s mouth, his hands, that he has to watch him drinking coffee, for fuck’s sake—and goes to sit on the couch, resting his chin on his knees, his back to Steve.

Behind him, he can hear Steve’s footsteps, and then Steve nudges his shoulder with the mug of coffee.

“I thought you didn’t like coffee,” Tony says.

“I don’t,” says Steve patiently. “It’s not for me. It’s for you.”

Tony takes it. Steve settles down on the couch, close to Tony but not touching him. After a minute of silence, Steve says, “Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” says Tony. He hates how this feels. It feels like a conversation with his father about Tony’s drinking, where they both pretend they don’t know that Howard’s three glasses of whiskey in by noon every day.

“Because I haven’t seen you since the game,” Steve says.

Tony shrugs. _You know, you_ know _what this is,_ he wants to say. Steve is the one who has the right to be pissed off. Any second now he’s going to say so, and they’ll argue, and Tony can take that, the fighting. The waiting for it to start is what makes his skin crawl. His heart is pounding in his ears.

“I wanted to come over,” says Steve, looking down at his hands, not at Tony. “On Saturday, when you asked. I did, but I—it’s a big deal for me, and I got nervous and it was stupid.”

“What?” Tony says. (Seriously, _what?_ )

“What?” says Steve.

Tony leans over the side of the sofa and sets down his coffee. “What are we fighting about?” he says, unfolding himself slightly.

“What were you mad about?” Steve says. “You weren’t answering my texts, and I thought you—”

“You’re mad at _me._ Because I was shitty to Sam, remember?”

Steve stares at him. “What are you talking about? I just said don’t be a jerk to my friends. If you’re mad at me, be mad at me, Sam didn’t do anything.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

Oh.

But—

“Oh,” says Tony.

Steve is still shaking, a little, from the cold, and it is turning Tony’s heart to mush. This boy. How much Tony wants him, how little he deserves him.

With his shoulder, he nudges at Steve’s arm, and Steve lifts it and wraps it around Tony’s shoulders, pulling him in. Steve _smells_ good. Coconutty and familiar. Being curled up with Steve like this quiets the noise in Tony’s head, just a little. It’s not comfort. He’s warming Steve up, after being out in the cold.

“Nice shades,” Steve says. Tony angles his head up to find Steve doing that thing, that unbearably sweet thing with his mouth, trying not to smile.

“Yeah, well, you might be wedded to clean living, but some of us have hangovers and the light burns us.” But Tony takes the sunglasses off anyway. The light from the windows isn’t too bad. If all noise were to be eliminated from the universe, the light from the windows would be relatively okay.

With his free hand, Steve covers Tony’s eyes. “I’ll be your sunglasses.”

Tony laughs. Two days without Steve was too many days. He turns his face into Steve’s chest, hiding his eyes. “There,” he says. “Problem solved.”

He’s joking, sort of, officially, but Steve rests his long fingers at the nape of Tony’s neck, stroking them through the hair at the base of his skull. If Tony thinks the word _tender_ about what’s happening, how Steve is with him, he’ll have to pull away, so he doesn’t think it. He closes his fingers around a handful of Steve’s Badgers hoodie and breathes him in.

Coconut. Cold air. Floral laundry detergent.

 _Stay,_ he wants to say.

He wants to say: _Don’t leave me._

 

On Wednesday, Happy and Tony drive to Newark airport to pick up Howard and Maria. Maria calls him _sweet boy,_ and when Howard cracks his knuckles, Tony notices that he's wearing two rings on his right hand.

They’re staying at a hotel in Soho that Tony fucking hates as soon as he sets foot in the lobby, though he keeps this opinion to himself. Obie’s due to come up for the weekend, “to check on your progress,” Howard says.

 

On Thursday, Maria suggests they go see a show. She’s heard good things about _Hamilton,_ she says. Tony says he should really stay home and get a few things done remotely before the whole SI staff heads out for Christmas break. His parents go to the show without him, and he lies on the bed in his hotel room, his throat painfully tight, and wishes he could trust his voice to be steady enough to call Steve. Ten days seems unbearably, hideously long.

 

On Saturday, Obie comes into town, and they all go out to dinner. Howard always drinks more when Obie’s there, matches him drink for drink. Obie buys Tony drinks, too, and Howard gets pissed off if Tony drinks them. It’s a fucking high-wire act, the two of them, like they’re in a conspiracy to make sure that Tony’s always disappointing at least one of them.

Tony’s relieved when his mother pleads a headache and he can bow out without Obie calling him a party-pooper or Howard asking him, in that dangerous voice there’s no right answer to, if he has something against spending time with the people who fund his playboy lifestyle.

A few hours after midnight, Tony’s phone buzzes, which would have woken him up if he’d been able to get to sleep in the first place. It’s Obie, drunk as a skunk. “Come pick us up,” he slurs. “They’re throwing us out. Not taking a fucking taxi.”

“Okay,” Tony says. “I’ll wake up Happy.”

Obie snorts. Away from the phone he says, “What kind of boy you raising, Howard? He wants t’wake up his driver.” He drags out the vowel in “driver,” and Tony can hear Howard in the background, indistinct, but the tone of it raises Tony’s hackles. A moment later, Howard’s on the phone.

“You come get us, boy.”

“Dad, I can’t,” says Tony, as if there’s any way to be reasonable with Howard in this state. “I don’t have the keys to Happy’s car. I can call a car service if—”

“You even listening to me?” says Howard. “You listen when I talk to you?”

Another week, that’s all he has to get through.

“Okay,” says Tony. “Okay, I’ll come get you.”

In the city that never sleeps, it is remarkably fucking difficult to find somewhere to rent a car at ungodly hours of the morning, right before Christmas. The Avis office at JFK is open, but that’s going to be a little over an hour. Eventually, Tony just bribes the front desk clerk to give him Happy’s room key, so he can sneak in and swipe the keys to the limo. Fuck everything anyway.

When Tony gets uptown with the fucking limo and double-parks it because of course, Obie and Howard are sitting on the steps outside the bar—it’s some shitty dive, Tony has no fucking idea why they chose it in the first place—drinking whiskey from the bottle, not even a paper bag.

“Took you long enough,” Obie shouts. He’s more sober than Howard, who’s barely upright.

“Jesus,” Tony says, “get up, get in the car. You’re lucky the cops haven’t seen you.” He hooks Howard’s arm around his neck and tries to haul him up. Howard’s not giving him any help, just watching him with hooded eyes that bode no good for anyone.

(One more week.)

“Can you give me a hand?” Tony asks Obie. Howard’s got a few inches on Tony, and he’s bulkier, too, broader-shouldered and larger-boned. Tony’s built like Maria’s side of the family, slim and smaller, though his features are all Howard.

“Pussy,” Obie mutters. He takes another swig of whiskey and giggles.

“God, get in the _car,_ Obie. Dad, come on, I brought the car so we can—” Finally, Howard allows himself to be lifted, to get his feet under him. Tony’s staggering under his weight, unsteady on the snow-slippery sidewalk. Not that this is the first time he’s had to pour Howard into a waiting car, but usually there’s at least someone else to help, Happy or a slightly more sober Obie. He gets Howard into the car, loses his balance as he’s straightening up, and catches his knee on the bottom of the car door.

“Fuck, fuck,” he says. “Obie! Come on! Get in the fucking car so we can get going.”

Nobody’s seatbelt is buckled as they drive back to the hotel. Tony turns right on red illegally and steps on the gas hard. If the car crashes and they all die, then it’s just going to be good fucking riddance, an early out to this shithole of a holiday.

He’d forgotten, sort of, how spending more than one day with Howard turns him claustrophobic inside his own skin, a trapped animal willing to gnaw its own foot off to escape. All he can think of, as he’s driving, is _get out get get out get out get out,_ and any way out seems reasonable, seems necessary, better than what he’s got now.

The only way out is through.

The only way out is through.

But he lets the valet deal with his father, back at the hotel. He’ll catch hell for it tomorrow, and he doesn’t fucking care. He wants to hear Steve’s voice. It’s too late to call, but God, he wants—

One more week.

 

On Sunday, Howard doesn’t come down to breakfast. “I stopped in to check on him,” says Maria brightly, “but he’s a big sleepyhead this morning.”

“Hung over, you mean,” says Tony. The coffee at the hotel is really, really good. It’s the only good thing about this quote-unquote vacation.

“Oh, Tony,” Maria says. “Why do you and your father always assume the worst about each other?”

Tony looks at her. As long as he lives, he doesn’t think he’ll understand Maria Stark. If this is what she really thinks—really, really—or if it’s the only way she can cope with what she’s made her life into. “Too much alike,” he says, the thing she wants to hear, the thing she believes.

(What if it’s true? What if, what if.)

In his room, after breakfast, he calls Steve. He doesn’t know what the hell he can possibly say to him about this holiday that will be true, but he wants to hear his voice. God, he wants to hear his voice, and imagine for a few minutes that Steve’s there with him.

But Steve’s phone just rings and rings, and his voicemail’s automated, because he hasn’t set it up right. Tony doesn’t leave a message.

Fine. Sight-seeing then. That’s what they came to the city for, isn’t it? Sight-seeing. (Tony thinks of Steve’s face on the way to La Grenouille on Thanksgiving Day, tilted up at the skyscrapers, blue eyes reflecting the Christmas lights.) Tony bundles himself up in coat and scarves and gloves and heads out.

Howard’s at the door to his hotel room. Unreadable. “Going out, son?” he says.

“I—just to the store,” Tony says. He lies easily to Howard; he always has. “I have a little bit of a headache, thought I’d pick up some aspirin.”

“You mean you’re hungover.” Howard shoves his way into the bedroom.

“No sir,” says Tony. “I think it’s the change in pressure, the cold front. That kind of headache, I think.”

Howard says, “Get your aspirin from the front desk. This is family time. Your mother flew all the way out here to spend time with you, and you’re—what? Sneaking out? I’m not a fool. Take that fruity coat off and stop trying to weasel out of your obligations. You spend enough of my money, you can take a few fucking days at Christmas.”

The coat is black, and if Howard ever finds out about Steve—

Tony undoes the buttons on his coat and tosses it on the bed. He knows how this ends. He has been here enough times to know. It doesn’t matter what he says. “Is Uncle Obie sticking around for Christmas Day?” he says, picking a neutral topic, shifting towards the door. If he can get them both out into the hall, then it’ll be okay. The housekeeping staff, the other guests.

“Where are you going?” Howard says.

It’s the _waiting_ Tony can’t take. “Wherever the fuck you tell me to go, Dad, as fucking usual.”

He knows Howard’s face, his fists, the way he moves when he’s going to hit him. Every time it happens, he tells himself he’s not going to back away the next time, it never does any good anyway—but when Howard lunges at him now, he flinches backward, he can’t not, so that his shoulders bump into the door of the closet.

Tony brings his arms up to protect his face—God, if he has to account for another black eye—but Howard drives a fist into Tony’s stomach. He hasn’t braced for it, and backed up to the wall like this, he can’t shift his body in the direction of the punch, to lessen the impact. Howard’s fist doubles him over, knocks the wind out of him, and he sinks to the floor, gagging, trying to get air back in his lungs.

“Insubordinate little shit,” his father mutters. He spits on the carpet and leaves the room, slamming the door hard behind him.

Tony’s teeth are chattering. He wants Steve more than he wants his next breath of air. Even more than that, he wants Steve never to know. He wants never to see Steve’s face, knowing this about him.

After a few minutes, he’s able to get himself up. Not so bad. Fast, at least, and he won’t have bruises he’ll have to explain to Steve.

(Steve, Steve, Steve, Steve. His warm chest and his big hands, the way he presses his lips together when he’s trying not to smile. Steve.)

Obie doesn’t knock, just walks into the room as Tony’s collapsing onto the bed. So Obie has a key to his room. Of course he does. Of course he’s here, this fast. Isn’t he fucking always. “Get the fuck out,” Tony says, wearily, into the blankets.

“Your father lose his temper?” Obie says, sitting down in the swivel chair at the desk. Wherever Obie sits, he always manages to make it look like a command center.

“He send you in here to do damage control?” Tony bites the words out. They aren’t even really a question. He knows the answer’s yes. He knows that Howard’s the golden goose, and Obie will do whatever it takes to keep him laying the golden eggs.

“You need a band-aid?” There’s a laugh in Obie’s voice.

Like a baby, Tony wants to say, _He hit me._ “I hate him,” he says, which isn’t much better.

“Tony, now, come on,” says Obie expansively. “You’re a grown man, I know you know how to roll with a punch. What’d you and your father have words about?” He means what did Tony do to piss him off. “Was it about how ugly you were being to him last night?”

“What?” says Tony. He wriggles to a seated position on the bed. His ribs hurt, and his breathing’s still uncomfortably shallow. “I—are you kidding? You woke me up to come get you at ass-crack o’clock, and I’m supposed to have been, what, thrilled to steal Happy’s car and drive up to Columbus Circle to get your drunk asses because you’re too good for a taxi?”

Obie chuckles. “All I’m saying, kid, is it takes two to tango. You wind that man up like nobody else, you know that?”

Yeah, he knows.

“So what was it all about?”

“Nothing,” says Tony. “Fucking nothing. He came in here wanting to hit me, and then he did hit me. So what the hell else is new?” He hates this. Howard’s worse when Obie’s not there, but having to recap everything to Obie, hearing how stupid it sounds when he says it out loud—Tony would take getting punched a second time, if it meant he didn't have to have one of these after-the-fact talks with Obie.

Obie waits.

“I was mouthing off to him,” Tony admits. "A little bit."

“There it is,” says Obie. He gets out of his chair and claps Tony on the back. “Son, I love you both, you know that? And you don’t make it easy for me. But I’ll tell you this: It hurts him a hell of a lot more not to have the respect of his son than it hurts you to—”

“He fucking sucker-punched me!”

“He’s almost sixty, Tony. Man up a little bit, huh? And treat your old man with the respect he’s entitled to?”

In Tony’s opinion, Howard’s entitled to some arsenic in his morning hangover cure and not much else. But he doesn’t say this to Obie.

His phone rings.

“I need to take this,” says Tony. _Please be Steve. Please, please be Steve._

“Sure thing,” says Obie. “Keeping on top of your work. Good boy.” He ruffles Tony’s hair on his way out, and Tony swallows back guilt and bile.

“This is Stark,” he says into his phone, as the door’s swinging shut behind Obie.

“Rogers here,” says Steve, and he laughs.

Tony has tears in his eyes, and he doesn’t know why. “Hey, I miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Steve says. “You should see how pitiful I am here on campus by myself. There’s one campus dining location open, and they only sell hamburgers. Flat scrawny ones. I’m not sure there’s any real meat in them.”

“ _I’ll_ put some real meat in you,” says Tony, leering, swiping the back of his hand across his eyes.

Steve laughs again. “That’s a dick joke, right?”

Tony flops onto his bed and smiles up at the ceiling. “Yeah, eighteen, that’s a dick joke.”

“When are you coming back? It’s harder to tell you’re making dick jokes when I can’t see if you’re making a dick-joke face.”

 _Right now. Can I come now? If I come back now, are you willing to find out how far and fast we can run from one of the richest and most powerful men in the world? Just the two of us?_ God, he’s pathetic. “Day after Christmas. Saturday.”

“Okay,” says Steve. “That’s not too bad. Right? Not even a whole week left. We can make it that long.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “Not too bad.”

His voice must sound awful, because Steve is silent for a long minute. When he speaks again, he’s gentler. “I want to just—I don’t know. Be with you. Hop a bus to the city and surprise you. I want to do all that cheesy New York stuff. Kiss you when the ball drops on New Year’s.”

“I’ll be back before New Year’s,” says Tony. “And I won’t have anyone else to kiss that night, so—”

“So it’s a date,” Steve says. He deserves better than Tony. Infinitely better than some rich asshole overconfident kid who can’t even—

“Yeah,” Tony says. “It’s a date.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GOODBYE UNICORNS FOR REAL NEXT TIME I SWEAR.


	6. Through the Uprights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys are reunited after a rotten Christmas.

On holidays, it’s usually Bucky he misses. He’s been without his parents long enough that it doesn’t feel normal to be with a family at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but he misses going out somewhere cheap and terrible, Denny’s or IHOP, whatever’s open, and playing poker or blackjack with Bucky all night.

This year it’s Tony.

He misses Bucky too, still, always. Only—Tony's the one he wants, the one whose scent he misses. (Tony smells like coffee, and metal sometimes. His hair smells not floral but expensive, like there’s another brand of scents available in bath products made specifically for the super-rich.) Tony’s slim fingers, rough with calluses, sliding over Steve’s collarbone. His wide, wicked smile when he looks up from kissing Steve. The way he always seems a breath away from gone, and how much Steve wants to keep him.

During the whole holiday, Tony only calls once. He says that he misses Steve, and Steve’s overcome with relief. Because he can admit—and does, to Sam, though he doesn’t say it to Tony—that he thought Tony would find someone else, in New York. Steve imagines him going with his parents to rich-people parties, attended by girls in long gowns and elbow-length gloves, rich girls whose hair smells like money instead of Suave coconut shampoo.

“I missed you too,” he says, to Tony. To avoid sounding needy, he makes a joke about hamburgers, and Tony makes a joke about dicks, and Steve says, “When are you coming back?”

“Day after Christmas,” says Tony. “Saturday.”

“Okay,” Steve says. “That’s not too bad. Right? Not even a whole week, we can make it that long.”

Tony says, not quite convincingly, “Yeah, not too bad.”

It’s nothing unusual, and Tony’s voice sounds normal, talking about dates in the New Year, but Steve wishes he were with him. He wants to hold his face in his hands and kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him. He wants to press his thigh between Tony’s legs and hear Tony gasp against his skin.

“How are your parents?” Steve asks, because he has to ask something, and if he asks about parents, he won’t keep thinking about Tony’s dick.

“Oh,” Tony says airily, “same as usual. Howard hates me. Maria wants to play Happy Families. Obie’s not as good at keeping the peace as he thinks he is. I had to go pick their drunk asses up from Columbus Circle last night.”

“Remind me, Obie’s your—uncle?”

“Yeah,” says Tony. “Sort of. Uncle, second father, whatever. He thinks this is a work call. I’m supposed to be miniaturizing large things, not making time with hot cornerbacks. Hey. I watched a football game.”

Sometimes Tony makes Steve so happy his throat closes up. He manages to say, “Which one? With your dad?”

“Nah, he’s a baseball guy. Also an asshole. Jets/Cowboys.”

Steve groans. That was a painful one. “Not our best look,” he says.

“Well,” says Tony, in that slow, drawling voice that Steve finds unbearably sexy. “If they’d had _you_ on defense, eighteen. Would’ve gone another way.”

“Shut up.”

Tony laughs. “So I went online and looked up the Jets—”

“Please don’t say butt fumble,” Steve says. (Like Clint doesn’t bring _that_ up often enough.)

“—and I watched the butt fumble video, like, a million times.”

“You're a terrible person, and I’m breaking up with you.”

“No you’re not,” says Tony, and his voice sounds so—joyous, suddenly, it’s almost enough to make up for the worst fumble recovery in all of Jets history.

“Yeah,” Steve admits. “I’m not. Come home soon, okay?”

“Believe me, I’m coming as soon as I can,” says Tony.

After they get off the phone, Steve stares at the ceiling and wonders what Christmas would be like if Tony were here, watching football games, going out for lasagna. (Other stuff.) It’s scary, how fast Tony has come to feel like home.

It’s scary because Steve can’t honestly imagine a world where Tony would stay. When his father gives him permission to leave New Jersey, he’ll be gone like a shot, and that’ll be it. While Steve will be, what, finishing out his final year, trying to pass math, hoping someone will draft him based on his stats and not who he dates?

When Steve starts thinking like this, he has to go running. It’s too cold and slippery for his favorite routes, so he’s stuck with the track, which gets cleaned and salted regularly, even if the scenery’s not particularly varied. Running centers him. Tony will be back on Saturday, and that’s going to be good enough.

***

Nothing can make being alone on Christmas Day anything but lousy.

Usually Steve at least has Clint. This year he’s spending the holiday with Kate, a sophomore who does lacrosse and archery. Steve can never quite get the hang of her as a person, or of what she means to Clint (he swears it’s platonic with her, which supports Steve's secret theory that Clint's actually into guys). But Steve’s glad for him. He is. To have someone to give a present to on Christmas Day.

(He has a present for Tony. He’s not sure if they’re doing that.)

Peggy calls on Skype from England, late for her, still early for Steve. Her internet’s not great, and they aren’t able to say much more than hello before the delay on the audio makes the conversation impossible. Peggy tells him she loves him. Nobody’s done that since his mother died.

Sam calls, too. If Steve can’t have Tony, he’s really, really glad to be able to talk to Sam, who never lets him tell comforting lies.

“You don’t sound like it’s fine,” says Sam frankly. “You sound like it sucks.”

“It sucks,” Steve admits. “I miss you guys. I really miss Bucky.”

“You doing okay with that?”

He means the water thing. “Yeah,” Steve says. “Be glad when you get back, though.”

“You can call if you need,” Sam says. “Put your phone on speaker, wrap it in a plastic bag.”

“Thanks,” says Steve.

“Sure thing. You talk to your sugar daddy yet today?”

Steve hates it when his friends call Tony that. It makes him wonder if he’s been handling the alternating dates thing right, if he should’ve insisted they only do things Steve can afford to do, always. (But Tony wouldn’t be happy with that, how could he? He’s the kind of guy who goes to galas and drinks champagne out of those super-thin glasses.) “No. I mean, I called and left a message.”

“Okay,” says Sam, a little annoyed.

“He’s with his parents,” Steve says. “I think, um—He doesn’t get along with his father too well. I think he maybe wants to just sort of get through it.”

“He know you’re alone?” Sam says. He’s definitely getting pissed at Tony now.

“No,” Steve says. Actually, he’s not sure. Tony knows Steve’s parents are both dead, and he knows about Bucky if he’s read anything about Steve online. But they didn’t talk about where Steve’s friends were going.

Sam groans. “Steve-o, come on, how many times we gonna talk about this? Don’t be a hero all the time, keeping everything to yourself. If he’s right for you, he’s going to want to be there for you. Like we all do.”

Steve doesn’t answer. His friends aren’t there with him, any more than Tony is, so there’s nothing to say.

“My mom’s going to get you out here next year,” Sam says, as if he can hear Steve’s thoughts. “She can’t stop talking about you, all alone at Christmas. We’ll make it happen, okay? I’ll be making the big bucks next year.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “living the high life with the Browns of Cleveland.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Number one target for when they finally pick up Tebow and give him the career he deserves.”

“Cleveland ain’t that desperate,” says Sam.

“Desperate enough to draft your sorry butt.”

Sam laughs. “Hey, Steve, I gotta go, but—call me if you need to. Any time. I’ll drop what I’m doing.”

“Thanks,” says Steve.

After they get off the phone, Steve thinks about next year. Next Christmas. Sam will be long gone, could be anywhere in the country. Maybe Steve can save up enough to go on a trip. Just something small, just for Christmas Day, so he won’t be sitting staring at the walls of his dorm room.

As he’s going to sleep that night—it’s hard to get to sleep, he’s excited like a little kid to see Tony tomorrow—he lets himself think about spending next Christmas with Tony. (Even though it’s impossible, Tony won’t want him that long, won’t be here that long, how could he?) Opening presents under a little tree. Watching dumb Christmas movies that Tony would probably make fun of. Falling asleep curled up together, tired and happy.

***

After waiting around for most of Saturday—Tony never actually said what time he was getting back—Steve gives up and goes to the weight room to distract himself. Coach Buccianti gave him a key for the holidays and made him promise, double-promise, triple-swear, that he won't let anyone else in there over the break.

He's been there about twenty minutes when Tony calls. "Hey!" he says, delighted. "Are you back?"

“Where are you?”

“At the weights room,” Steve says. “Coach let me have a key so I could—are you okay?”

“I’m sending a car,” says Tony. There’s a scrape to his voice that Steve has never heard before and doesn’t like. “So you can come over, okay?”

“Yeah, okay,” says Steve. He grabs a towel and heads for the shower. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be ready outside. Tony, is everything—”

“I’m fine,” says Tony, and hangs up.

While Steve’s in the shower, Tony calls back, and Steve falls over and bangs the hell out of his knees getting to the phone. Tony just says, “Don’t talk to Happy about me,” then hangs up again without waiting for a response.

Happy lets Steve ride up front when Steve asks, which is nice, and because Steve’s now officially worried, he does ask if Tony’s okay.

“That’s for him to say,” Happy says.

“Yes, sir,” says Steve. "Sorry." He’s worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth, and trying not to. And drumming on the ledge of the car window isn’t going to get him to Tony any faster. And there are probably things he could talk to Happy about that aren’t Tony, as they’re driving, except he can’t exactly think of them right now.

When they get to the loft, Steve unbuckles his seatbelt and shakes Happy’s hand. Happy doesn’t let go right away. Hanging onto Steve’s hand, he says, “Things can be bad with his parents, sometimes. But he doesn’t like to say so.”

“Yes, sir,” says Steve.

The door to the upstairs is unlocked, which Steve hopes is because Tony knew he was coming but fears is because Tony just doesn’t keep his doors locked. Upstairs, Tony is pacing, his little robot following him around. He doesn’t hear Steve come in. He’s all kinetics, a pinball of a boy, and Steve _missed_ him.

“Hey, genius,” Steve says.

Tony turns. It’s maybe the first time since they met that Tony hasn’t smiled when Steve walked into a room. Instead, he hurls himself at Steve, hard enough that Steve staggers backward from his weight. “You,” Tony says, “you, you, you, I need you. I missed you,” and kisses him, all feral grey eyes and hungry mouth.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks, pulling back. Tony feels thin, which doesn’t make any sense, unless this is what he’s been doing all through the last week, this perpetual, feverish motion.

“Shut up, don’t talk, just, fuck everything, I don’t care,” Tony says, babbling. He pulls Steve’s shirt and hoodie up and off, and it’s not the first time they’ve been shirtless together, but this is— 

“Hey,” Steve says. He holds Tony away from him, arm’s length away. “Hey. What is this. Tony. Did something happen?” _Are you high?_ he wants to ask, but he knows if Tony’s not (or probably even if he is), he’ll be mad at Steve for asking.

“I can’t be happy to see my boyfriend?” Tony says. “God.”

They’ve never said boyfriend before. Tony waits for a second, and when Steve doesn’t answer (he doesn’t know what to say, what he’s supposed to say, what this is even about), Tony shoves himself free of Steve’s hands. “Nobody’s making you be here,” he spits.

“What are you—” Steve slides his hands down Tony’s arms, gripping his elbows. “Tony, hey. What are you talking about? I missed you, it was awful without you. Why are you— Was it okay, with your parents, or—”

“No,” Tony snarls. “It wasn’t fucking okay. It’s never fucking okay with them. All I fucking wanted was to get back here and see you and not have every goddamn conversation turn into a fight, and I don’t get why you’re being so— What’s your _problem,_ Steve?”

“I just—I didn’t hear from you,” Steve says, trying to keep his voice calm. “I barely heard from you all holiday, and I missed you. You’re acting weird.”

“Sure. I’m the weird one. It’s incredibly fucking weird to want to touch you after I’ve been—” His voice cracks, and when Steve tries to pull him closer, hug him, Tony shrugs off his hands and stalks out of the room.

Steve follows him, into the bedroom. He’s never been in this room before, has barely been in the loft at all. Like the main room, it’s a little messy and a lot impersonal. It’s the bedroom of someone who will be gone at the first opportunity he gets. The bedroom of someone who will never possibly stay. 

“Tony,” Steve says, louder, the voice he’d use to call an audible on the field. “When was the last time you slept?”

Tony’s got his back to Steve. He’s fiddling with something on his chest of drawers, cuff links or something. He says, “I—I seriously don’t understand why you don’t want to have sex with me.”

“Because you’re acting really—”

“Not _today_ ,” Tony says. He whips around. He _is_ thin, his jeans are loose, and Steve can see the jut of his hipbones. “I mean _at all._ You keep, every time we— I don’t get it. Okay? I don’t get why you don’t want to.”

All of a sudden, he looks incredibly young, assailable in a way Steve can’t remember ever seeing him before. Steve crosses the room to him and hugs him ferociously tight, dipping his head into the crook of Tony’s shoulder. “I do want to,” he says. “I want to. I’m attracted to you like crazy. I just—I really don’t want to hurt you.”

Tony has never taken a hug from him like this, for comfort. If it ever feels like needing something from Steve, he pushes back, puts space between them, makes stupid jokes. But he is clinging to Steve like a life raft, and when he speaks, he’s trying for—and missing—his usual billionaire arrogance. “Like you could hurt me.”

Steve could, though. He knows he could. He knows people have. But he doesn’t say this. He says something else true, instead. “And I’ve never. Before. So.”

“Had sex?” says Tony.

“Yeah,” Steve says.

Without breaking the hug, Tony walks them both back until Steve’s knees hit the bed, and then he pushes. Steve goes over backward, scootches up the bed, and Tony follows. This isn’t comfort anymore; it’s something else. A thrill of anticipation runs through Steve. Now? he thinks. Is it okay now?

Tony puts a finger on the dip above Steve’s upper lip and trails it down, down, down his chin and throat and chest, down his stomach. “You,” he says. “Haven’t ever had sex before.”

“Yes. No. I mean, yeah, I haven’t.”

The smile Tony gives him has Steve half-hard, and when he slides his hand down the front of Steve’s jeans, Steve can’t stop himself from moaning, pressing into the touch. When he opens his eyes, Tony is watching him, smug and predatory. “Steve,” he says, murmurs, skimming his hand across Steve’s chest. “Steven.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He can’t keep his voice even, or remember what he wanted to say. He can't think if this is okay, if he should be saying something else, doing something else, asking Tony about the holiday. It's hard to think, with Tony touching him like this. “Take off your shirt, this isn’t fair.”

“Yeah, okay.” Tony lowers his hips until he’s straddling Steve and strips his shirt off. His skin never seems like anything less than a miracle to Steve, and Steve pulls him down and kisses him, rolling them over until Tony’s underneath him. He kisses his jaw, licks down the line of his neck, finds the place near Tony’s collarbone that makes him whimper.

“Your,” Tony gasps, “your attempts at distraction will not avail you.” Tony’s fingers are on Steve’s belt, tugging, and Steve lifts up his hips to give Tony better access. He wants his skin, he wants to be pressed as close to him as he can be.

“Don’t let me be bad at it,” Steve whispers as Tony slides down his body.

He doesn’t intend for Tony to hear him, but Tony does. He gets Steve’s jeans and boxers off and—while he’s up—his own pants too, and then he comes crawling back to Steve, tucking their hips together. “You can’t be bad at it. You couldn’t,” he says. He licks Steve’s bottom lip, and Steve opens his mouth for him. Tony has one hand in Steve’s hair, and the fingers of his other hand dig hard into Steve’s thigh.

Steve’s whole body jolts, and he makes a desperate noise in the back of his throat. Tony lets go of his mouth. “Good or bad?” he says.

“Good,” Steve says. He’s lost most of his ability to speak, and he’s moving his hips towards Tony’s hand, to make him—

Tony glances down, then back up to Steve’s face. He’s serious, now. “Hey, listen. Nothing you don’t like, okay? I want—” His voice gets softer. “I want to make you feel good, that’s the only fucking thing.”

He’s stroking Steve’s cock, just lightly, just the tips of his fingers, up and down.

“You do,” Steve manages. “God, Tony. God. That feels—”

Tony gives him the absolute wickedest of smiles and moves away from him, and Steve is lost for a second but then Tony takes him in his mouth and it’s almost more than Steve can take, the warmth and wetness and the way Tony _looks,_ and there’s this thing he’s doing with his tongue that’s—

“Wait wait wait. Wait. Tony.” Tony slides his mouth off of Steve, slow, and it takes all his concentration not to come from that, from the sight of Tony’s lips wet, his tongue licking away a drop of pre-come from the corner of his mouth. Steve says, “Come here.”

“I like the view down here an awful lot, though,” Tony says. Steve pulls the arm that Tony’s using to prop himself up, and Tony comes down hard, nearly level with Steve.

“I don’t want to come by myself,” Steve says. “I want to see you come too. I want you to come from me touching your cock.”

“Jesus fuck shit Christ.” Tony arches his hips into Steve, and they both moan. “That was so fucking hot. Steve that was so fucking fucking hot, please always say cock to me, oh Jesus fuck—” because Steve’s shoving at the waistband of his boxers. He _literally cannot wait,_ because all he wanted, all he could think about over the break, was how much he wants to touch Tony, and now he can and they are, and there’s nobody to walk in and Tony’s not being weird. He gets Tony’s boxers off, and every part of their bodies are pressed together, and it’s like, _Finally._ Like nothing else that’s happened has made as much sense as this.

“I always wanted this,” Steve says. He rolls them over, wrapping one hand around both of them, jerking them off together, and it is so much skin, it’s so much touch, it’s almost too much. “You,” he adds, and kisses Tony.

Tony’s pinned under Steve now, Steve taking most of his weight on the arm he’s using to hold himself up, and Tony’s far enough gone that his hips are jerking into Steve with every stroke. “Please don’t fucking stop,” Tony chokes out. “God, your hands, don’t stop, Steve, fuck—”

It’s so good Steve can’t completely believe that it’s real, and he keeps shutting his eyes from how good it feels and then opening them again because Tony’s fingers are digging into Steve’s back hard, hard, and he wants to see Tony’s face when he—

“Oh fuck, oh God,” Tony gasps, and he’s coming, and the sight of him, that, tips Steve over the edge too. He comes all over Tony’s chest, and it’s like—

(When was this ever something he wanted?)

It’s like saying, he’s mine.

 

Tony’s the one who gets up from the bed first, who comes back with a wet cloth and cleans them both off, who slides Steve’s boxers back onto him and drops a kiss at the indent of Steve’s hip. He tugs the sheets and comforter down, and Steve gets under them. “Come,” he says, pulling Tony’s wrist. “C’mere, I want to hold you.”

“How are you always so warm?” Tony asks. “It’s unnatural.”

“Clean living,” says Steve, nuzzling into the back of Tony’s neck. He likes having him here, in his arms, not tense, not working, not pacing. Just, here. Just with him. He doesn’t remember the last time he felt so completely, uncomplicatedly happy.

“That was, I meant to,” Tony says. “Steve. I meant to just— I wanted it to just be for you. I wanted to take care of you.”

 _Who took care of you?_ Steve wants to ask, but doesn’t ask, because he’s unpleasantly certain that the answer is, Nobody. “You’re ridiculous,” he says, and adds, to make Tony laugh, “—ly hot.”

“Nerd,” says Tony.

“Excuse me, if either of us is a nerd, it is definitely you and not me,” Steve says. “You’re lucky I haven’t stuffed you into any lockers yet.” Tony shakes with silent laughter, and Steve’s brave enough to say, “Hey. I’m sorry your Christmas was terrible.”

Tony’s shoulders tense a little. “Hey, you too.”

“Next year,” says Steve, even more bravely, “we should skip the whole terrible Christmas thing. Just spend it together in the first place.”

There’s a moment of silence, in which Steve basically stops breathing. Then Tony rolls over to face Steve, snuggling into his chest. “That’d be good,” he whispers, so softly that Steve almost doesn’t hear it, like he’s afraid Steve will change his mind.

For no reason in particular, Steve thinks again of Tony leaning against his chest of drawers, vulnerable. He tightens his arms around him and thinks: _I’m never, ever letting go of you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes: The Jets butt fumble actually has its own Wikipedia page. You can also watch the play in all its dubious glory over [at Deadspin.](http://deadspin.com/5962839/the-jetsiest-jets-play-ever-mark-sanchez-fumbles-after-getting-floored-by-his-linemans-ass) PLEASE ENJOY. (Poor Steve.)


	7. Practice Reps

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein Tony is unexpectedly competent at both feelings and breakfast foods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for some PTSD symptoms! If you skip down to where they're talking about omelets you'll can avoid it.

Steve wakes up before Tony. His boyfriend (are they official boyfriends now?) is balled up tight on the far side of the bed, and Steve wants to unknot him, kiss his forehead, ease some of the tension out of him. But he’s also gross, and he needs a shower wants to be finished with it before Tony gets up and wants to have sex in the shower.

When Steve and Bucky were really little, and Bucky would sleep over, Steve’s mother would make pancakes in the morning. And she’d say, _Go wake up Sleeping Beauty with a little kiss,_ and Steve would tiptoe back into his bedroom and kiss Bucky’s cheek to wake him up.

He hasn’t thought of that in years.

Shower first. Then make coffee. Then wake up Tony.

As he steps into the shower, Steve’s trying to decide if it’s okay to use Tony’s shampoo, whatever it is that makes Tony smell costly. He’s not thinking of Bucky—he _isn’t,_ not the bad stuff—but panic has him by the throat before he has a chance to prepare for it.

 _Not now, not here, please please please._ He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe and there is water everywhere. As he’s fumbling for the taps, he slips and falls, comes down hard and loud on his wrist and hip. God, Tony’s going to wake up. He’s going to wake up and see him and he’s going to think, he’s going to, he’s—

“Steve?” Tony’s voice calls, outside the door.

Steve tries to say, “One second!” but he can’t, he cannot, he is giving it everything but he cannot breathe, and the water is everywhere, please please don’t come in, there is water all around him and in his nose and his mouth and his ears, and Tony—

“Sorry, sorry, I just got—” Tony’s voice says.

God, he’ll see. He’ll see.

“Hey,” says Tony, scared. “Steve. Baby. Hey, hey, hey.”

Steve tries to say something reassuring. Nothing comes out. His throat is not letting any air through. He’s going to die like this, from the water, how stupid, to have survived that first time and then to die gasping in a porcelain tub in New Jersey.

The water stops pouring in at him. He still can’t breathe but—

Tony’s scent in his nose. Don’t see me. Don’t look.

“God, Steve. It’s okay, you’re okay. You’re okay, babe, I’m here, you’re okay, shhh.” Tony is in the tub with him, heedless of the water, putting his arms around Steve, pushing his face into Steve’s shoulder. These are the sensations Steve focuses on. Short breaths, in, out, until longer ones are possible. Tony’s fingers in his hair. The porcelain of the bathtub, cooling against his back.

Steve’s breathing starts to even out. He doesn’t want to look at Tony. He’s naked in Tony’s tub, and this is as bad as it could be. What was so important about taking a shower right now, that it couldn’t have waited until he got back to the dorm? “Sorry,” he says shakily, and he moves to get away.

Tony lets go right away, gets out of the tub. He hands Steve a towel and turns his back while Steve wraps it around his waist. “Good?” he says.

“Sorry,” says Steve, burning with humiliation. He hasn’t had a panic attack since the season started, and it had to happen now. In front of his new boyfriend. Who is too thin and coming off a lousy holiday with his lousy parents. Who was probably already having second thoughts about Steve after last night anyway.

Tony turns back around. He looks lost, bewildered. Steve’s eyes sting, and he shuts them. Even like that, he can feel Tony watching him. After a second, Tony takes one of Steve’s hands and kisses the palm. He says, “Does that happen a lot?”

“I want to get dressed,” Steve says. He opens his eyes. He doesn’t know what the expression on Tony’s face means.

“Sure,” says Tony. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll just—I’ll get out of your hair, I’ll go make some coffee.”

Steve wants to call Sam, and he can’t. He should have done that first, he should have called Sam and talked to him, gotten the sound of his voice in his ears before he tried— When Steve gets dressed, he gets all the way dressed, shoes and socks too, so if Tony wants him to leave he can be gone right away.

In the kitchen, Tony’s chopping vegetables. It’s such an incongruous sight that Steve thinks, at first, he must have misunderstood something. “Are you cooking?”

“I can cook,” says Tony. “Why do people always think I can’t cook? I’m making omelets. What do you want in yours? I have bell peppers, cheddar cheese, swiss cheese, red onions, white onions, and spinach.”

Steve rubs the knuckles of his left hand with the fingers of his right. His wrist hurts where he came down on it. “You don’t need to do this. I’m fine.”

“Get over yourself. I bought these groceries yesterday morning so I could feed you an omelet after I deflowered you. What do you want in yours?”

“Everything,” Steve says. He sits at the breakfast bar and stretches, trying to iron out some of his soreness from the weights yesterday.

Tony dumps onions, peppers, spinach, and spices into the pan, then comes around the bar and kisses Steve. Just lightly, like they’re about to take their leave. “Last night,” he says. “Oh, shit, Steve, don’t tense up like that, do you seriously think I’m about to offer a critique here? I was going to say you’re fucking beautiful.”

“You,” Steve says. He makes a conscious effort to relax his shoulders. It helps to think about Tony’s eyes and mouth and dick, all his to take. “Was it, was I, was—” He wants to not be pathetic, but the ship has pretty much sailed on that at this point.

“Yes.”

Steve can’t help smiling. “I didn’t finish the sentence.”

Tony takes both of Steve’s hands, threading their fingers together, and tugs down as he leans in to kiss Steve’s mouth again. “Yes,” he says when they break apart. “Everything.”

As soon as Steve thinks _Memorize him,_ Tony has spun away, back to the vegetables he’s sauteeing. Spinach keeps falling out of the pan and onto the floor, and Tony keeps grabbing it and putting it back in.

Steve likes watching him.

“So Christmas with your parents,” he says.

“Really?” Tony says, incredulous, turning around with the spatula in his hand.

“Um—”

“Look, I’m trying to be all tactful here and like, follow your lead, but seriously, Steve, that was— Not good. That was not good back there.”

Steve mutters, “Sorry.”

“No—” Tony sets down the spatula and comes around the bar again. He nudges Steve’s legs open with his knee and steps between them, so he can cradle Steve’s face in his hands. He’s a hair taller than Steve like this (Steve’s height is mostly legs). “Steve. Come on. I meant, I hated seeing you that way—hurting like that, and I didn’t know what to do to help.”

Sam always says, _Don’t be a hero._

“You um,” Steve says. “Do you know about, um—my friend, what happened? Bucky?”

“Yeah. Clint told me.”

Good. Steve doesn’t think he can make it through that story. “Running water’s not great for me. Is all.”

He watches Tony digest this. “So, every time you take—”

“No. No, no. It’s—I’m usually fine. When there are other people in the room, it helps.” He waits for Tony to make a dirty joke, but Tony’s silent, watching him, listening. “At the dorm, Sam usually takes a shower the same time as me, and he chats to me in the other stall.”

“I could’ve talked to you,” Tony says quietly, sliding his fingers into Steve’s hair.

“I didn’t think I’d— I have a pretty good grip on it. Now.” For months after it happened, he couldn’t deal with anything but sponge baths, and he is not telling that to Tony. “I honestly thought it would be okay. What you did was—you helped.”

Tony’s rubbing his scalp, pressing his fingers in hard. “Okay,” he says. “Just—let me run you a bath, next time. Cut this whole thing off at the pass.”

“Will do,” says Steve, which is about all he can manage, when Tony’s doing that. It feels amazing. It always feels amazing. If he wasn’t so crazy about Tony already, he’d stick around just for this.

“You are a total slut for a scalp massage,” Tony says, teasing.

Caught off guard, Steve makes a noise that surprises both of them, something between a gasp and a moan. And with Tony standing between his legs, there’s no way to disguise the fact that he’s getting hard.

“ _Really,_ ” Tony says. His voice a purr.

“Um.”

“No um,” says Tony. He is all intention now, eyes hard and focused, in that way that Steve has never ceased to find flattering and—if he’s being honest—really, really hot. “Fuck omelets. We’re doing this instead. You want me to call you names a little bit, eighteen?”

His fingers still entwined in Steve’s hair, he pulls, tilting Steve’s head back so he can bite Steve’s throat. It feels _amazing,_ and Steve doesn’t realize he’s shifted to grind his thigh between Tony’s legs until Tony chokes out his name.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

“Fuck off,” Tony says breathlessly. “Wait. Wait.” He dashes over to the stovetop and switches it off, then returns to Steve. He’s still wearing his pajama bottoms, and Steve can see the outline of his dick through them as it hardens. It’s not the hottest thing Steve’s ever seen—he still can’t stop thinking of Tony’s mouth as it slid off his cock last night—but it’s pretty damn close.

He thinks: _That’s for me._

He thinks: _I could have that in my mouth._

That thought makes him shiver. Tony’s advancing on him like a cat stalking its prey. He says, “Take your shirt off.”

Steve hesitates. (In the kitchen?)

“I said,” Tony says, “take your shirt off. You have a fucking amazing body, and I want to dirty you up a little bit.”

Steve exhales.

“A lot bit,” Tony adds. His fingers play with the hem of Steve’s shirt, slide underneath it and up, up, up. Steve shudders again. “You were _so_ hungry for it last night. So fucking desperate for my cock that I didn’t even get the chance to feel you inside me. So now you owe me. Shirt. Off.”

Inside me inside me inside me. It rings in Steve’s ears as he’s taking his shirt off and kicking off his shoes. Inside me inside me, and Tony’s steering him back into the bedroom, pressing him down on the bed, where the sheets are still rumpled and unmade, and Steve’s whole body is lit up with everything he wants. There is so little between them.

Last night was fast and desperate, and this—

This—

Tony slides down his body, kissing, biting, and opens his mouth over Steve’s erection. Even through the denim of Steve’s jeans, it’s electric. He cries out, and Tony smiles his most vicious smile. He’s is unbuckling, unbuttoning, unzipping Steve, sliding his jeans down his legs, slow, slow. Touching him everywhere but where he wants it the most. When Tony bites the inside of his thigh, Steve gasps his name, and God, he could come from this. And Tony’s got his pants off and is working his way back up Steve’s body

Inside me inside me inside me. “Please,” he says.

“Please what?” says Tony. That smile.

“What you said. I want that, I want—”

Tony strips off his pajama bottoms. He isn’t wearing anything under them, and he slowly, deliberately, stretches himself against Steve, rocks his erection into Steve’s thigh. They both hiss. Tony says, “You don’t get anything you don’t ask for. Let’s make that a rule, actually. If you want me to do something, you have to ask me for it.”

Steve must be bright red. His face is burning. “I can’t—”

“Hm,” says Tony. He takes one of Steve’s hands, licks the palm, and guides it between their bodies, slides it under the waistband of Steve’s boxers and down his throbbing cock. “Then I guess you’ll have to take care of this yourself. I’m supposed to be making breakfast anyway.” He rolls off Steve, sitting up.

Steve grabs him by the shoulders and pulls him back, pins him under his weight. “To _fuck you,_ ” he says. “I want to fuck you. Okay?”

For a second he’s afraid he’s gone too far, been too rough. He can’t read Tony’s face (he never can), and it’s pretty damn obvious from the things Tony’s said that sex hasn’t always been good for him, hasn’t always been careful even if it’s always been consensual. But then Tony wraps his legs around Steve’s hips, and he says, “Lube and condoms’re in the drawer in the bedside table.”

Steve stretches over to get them, and Tony—for once—stays put. He looks a little stunned, to be honest. So Steve puts the stuff to one side and devotes himself to Tony, all the things he knows he likes. He stretches Tony’s arms above his head while he kisses him, open and dirty, and the way Tony kisses back is like Steve’s already fucking him.

“You have no idea how much I thought about you,” Tony gasps. Steve slides his palms down, down, over the indents of Tony’s hips, and holds him there, pressing with his thumbs, while he sucks on Tony’s earlobe. Tony says, “Fuck fuck fuck. Fuck.”

“Good?” Steve says.

“God. Yes. Get these _off,_ what are you even—”

Steve kicks off his boxers, and Tony slides a hand down his back, lower and lower, until he's pressing a finger against his hole. It is horribly, enormously weird. Steve makes an awful, high-pitched noise that is the farthest ever thing from sexy.

Even worse than that: Tony laughs.

Steve rolls off of him, onto his back, mortified, his hands over his face. He can’t get it together to apologize, much less, whatever, resume what they were doing.

“Wait, come back,” says Tony. Steve cracks his fingers to look at him. Tony’s on his stomach, watching Steve with his eyebrows all the way up. “What are you doing? It’s fine! I’m sorry I laughed, Steve, come on, I wasn’t try to push—oh Christ, no pun intended, I swear to God. It’s actually really hard to—fuck it.”

Steve snorts, because if he doesn’t, he’s going to cry, and if anything’s worse than failing at sex, it’s crying when you’re supposed to be having sex. “I’m the worst ever.”

“You are not! What? There’s not—It’s your first time out.”

“Not helping!” Steve says.

“No, listen. Wait, one sec.” Tony lies down on Steve, resting his chin on his crossed arms, on top of Steve’s chest. The weight of him is comforting, a good way to feel right before you literally die of embarrassment. “The first time I was with a guy and he tried to finger me, I elbowed him in the jaw and almost dislocated it. It can be really really good, but it’s just, it can be also weird at first. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. We’re trying stuff out right now, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says miserably.

“ _Steve,_ ” says Tony. “Stop making that face. If you could see inside my head you’d be—do you have any idea how many times I jerked off over the holiday thinking about you?”

“Uh. Probably, yeah.”

Tony’s back arches a little, his cock pressing into the cradle of Steve’s legs. “Oh, God. Did you—does that mean you—tell me what you thought about.” He braces himself on his arms, on either side of Steve’s torso, and dips his head to kiss his way up Steve’s jawline.

“I, um,” Steve says. “Tony, listen—“

“Nope,” says Tony. “No listening. You’ll just get in your own head and be all, whatever, bashful. Tell me what you thought about when you touched yourself.”

“No, just,” Steve says, “I will, just, but, you have to show me what to do, okay? My fingers. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.”

Tony lets out a laugh that is closer to a whine. “What a chore that’s going to be,” he says. “Showing you how to finger-fuck me.”

“And we can stop, any time you want.”

“Not a fucking chance,” Tony says, reaching for the lube. “Tell me what you—”

Steve grabs it first and holds it away, rolling them back over so Tony’s under him again. “Yes a fucking chance. Any time, okay?”

Tony’s eyes go soft. Steve kisses him because he can’t not, and Tony gets the lube away from him. He takes Steve’s index finger and coats it, more lube than Steve was imagining. He wonders if they should have put something down to protect the sheets first, but he doesn’t have a lot of time to think about it, because Tony’s spread his legs and is guiding Steve’s finger into him.

“Holy shit you have enormous fingers,” Tony gasps.

If Tony wasn’t hanging onto Steve’s wrist, Steve would jerk his finger out immediately. Tony yelps, “Rogers! Rogers, fuck, okay, number one, that wasn’t a complaint. Deeper, yeah? It’ll curve around—yeah, God, _fuck,_ Steve. Fuck. Like that. And—” His voice is ragged. “And number two, if you pull anything out really fast like you just tried to do, it’s going to be very not good. Don’t apologize. You apologize too much. Do two now.”

“Sorry,” Steve says. “Sorry sorry sorry—” but also, Tony’s moving Steve’s wrist, guiding him, fucking himself on two of Steve’s fingers, and it’s whiting out the higher functions in Steve’s brain.

“Tell me,” Tony orders, his voice not quite even. “Do like this with your fingers—” He makes a small scissor motion with his free hand. “That sort of thing, not too hard, and tell me what you were going to tell me. What you think about when you touch yourself.”

“I,” Steve says. He can’t think. “I—I think about that—that first day I saw you at Lynch’s. Like if I’d just, if I’d gotten down on my knees—”

Tony moans. It’s the best noise. _I’m doing that to him,_ Steve thinks.

“You didn’t even know my name,” Steve says, scissoring his fingers like Tony showed him, opening him up, making him whimper. “And I thought about how hot you were leaning against the side of the building, and if I’d just kneeled down right there, if I got your dick out of your pants and licked all the way down you. You’d just—you’d put your hands in my hair and make me go down on you like—”

Daring, he does it. His mouth is close enough, and he wants to see Tony come apart, so he traces a line down Tony’s hard, leaking cock with his tongue. Tony’s hips come completely off the bed, and his hand releases Steve’s wrist. 

“Fuck, Steve,” he gasps. “I can’t, please, please just—”

A condom hits Steve in the forehead, and Steve lets out a surprised laugh. “Hey!”

“Fucking get inside me, please, I know you’re fucking gagging for it anyway, so just—”

God, it’s _heady,_ being able to do this to him. Steve’s hands are shaking a little as he opens the condom wrapper and slides the condom onto his dick. (He’s worried before that it won’t be intuitive, that he’ll mess it up, but it’s exactly like in high school health class.) “Um,” he says, sliding a hand up Tony’s cock to distract him from how stupid this question is. “Do I need more lube?”

“Yes,” Tony says, thready. “Here, here, God, Steve—”

The condom’s actually sort of lubricated, but Steve really, really doesn’t want to hurt Tony, so he tosses some more lube on there anyway. (The sheets are going to be ruined.) (Tony doesn’t care, Tony can replace the sheets, why is he even _thinking_ about this.)

As he slides in, slow, he and Tony both moan. “Is—” Steve can barely think how to form words, with Tony’s body hot and tight around his cock. “—is this okay, is—”

“ _More,_ ” Tony begs. “Fucking fuck, Steve, baby, please. Please, oh God, you look so _fucking_ amazing—”

God, Steve’s not going to last, with Tony talking like this, and the heat of his body as Steve begins to move, and the sound of their hips slapping together. It’s so much heat and, God, everything, it’s like last night cranked up to eleven, it’s—

He remembers not to be a bad boyfriend (are they?—) and curls a hand around Tony’s cock as he thrusts into him, and Tony puts his head back and _howls_ as he comes into Steve’s fingers. It only takes a few more seconds for Steve to come too.

They collapse into each other, breathing hard. Steve feels a little surreal. He has to fight the urge to say, _It worked!_ Carefully, slowly, he pulls out of Tony and clambers off him to throw the condom away in the bathroom wastebasket. When he returns, Tony hasn’t moved. His eyes are shut, still.

Steve reconsiders and goes back in the bathroom for a washcloth, which he wets with warm water, to clean Tony off. He kisses Tony every place he swipes the cloth over him skin.

“S’really nice,” Tony mumbles. Steve balls up the washcloth and throws it at the bathroom doorway. It makes it into the tub, which isn’t bad, in Steve’s opinion, particularly since the act of throwing it seems to have used up the absolute last of his energy. He lies down on a section of bed that’s not damp and tugs at Tony’s arm until he comes, grumbling, to rest his head on Steve’s chest.

 _I’ve made you come twice now,_ Steve thinks with the kind of smugness that would get a pillow thrown at his head if he voiced it aloud. Privately, he feels like kind of a stud.

“Hey Steve,” Tony says sleepily.

“Hey babe,” says Steve, and it’s a thrill to call him that, like he has the right to it, like Tony’s his.

Tony yawns mightily, his fingers contracting over Steve’s shoulder. “To forestall,” he says around the yawn, “any anxious inquiries later this afternoon—”

“Oh shut up.”

“—let me just say now,” Tony continues (Steve can feel his smile against his skin), “that _this?_ ” He waves a hand. “Was an absolute privilege.”

This is the kind of thing. With Tony. Where Steve thinks that he would do anything, give up anything, to get to keep him. It takes him a second before he’s able to answer, and another second while he reminds himself that it’s too soon to say I love you (even though he thinks he does probably? How do you really know, anyway, like _know_ know?). “For me too.”

“Damn right,” says Tony.

***

 

Steve wakes up because something smells incredible.

“Wake up!” Tony carols in his ear. “I’ve brought us sex omelets for post-sex breakfast in bed to celebrate all the sex we’re going to have from now on forever!”

Laughing, Steve opens his eyes. Tony has a pair of pajama pants that look like his but aren’t his (he’s _wearing_ his) thrown over one arm like a maître d’s towel. He’s carrying two plates full of omelets, and he’s smiling this smile that Steve’s never seen before, like his face has cracked open and the sun’s come out behind it.

“Did you bring me pants?” Steve says incredulously.

“Yep!” says Tony. “Pants and omelets, I’m a full-service facility. Scoot over.”

Steve takes the pajama pants from Tony’s arm and slides them on. They’re ridiculously too short.

He nearly says, “I’m not a little kid. I don’t need someone to take care of me.”

And he nearly says, “We need to take the sheets off this bed and wash them, this is gross.”

Except he doesn’t say either of those things. Because when he hesitates for just that second, just as long as it takes to think those two thoughts, Tony’s smile wavers. So Steve says this instead: “You are the greatest boyfriend in the history of boyfriends. With the amazing sex and the pajama bottoms and the omelets.”

Tony clambers into bed next to him, smiling that ridiculous, all-the-way-happy smile. He gives one of the plates to Steve. “To be fair,” he says, “you don’t have anything to compare me to. For all you know, I just provided you with some intensely mediocre sex, and I’m keeping you here by convincing you that I’m some kind of, you know, sex genius.”

“Kind of self-sabotaging for you to point that out to me, though.” Steve takes a bite of his omelet. “Damn, Tony. That is _really_ good.”

“Yep,” Tony agrees. “Nobody ever thinks I can cook. I fly my friends Pepper and Rhodey into town every other Sunday for brunch, and they never let me cook. They think I don’t have the attention span.”

Steve’s mouth is full of what is really genuinely a pretty flawless omelet, so he doesn’t answer. But it occurs to him that while he has Peggy and Sam and Clint to fuss over, be their designated driver, bring them soup when they’re sick, or whatever, Tony doesn’t have anyone. To take care of.

And Steve’s never thought of that as being something that he has, people to take care of, people he can do things for, until just now. Until even while Tony’s eating his own omelet, he’s still watching Steve eat his out of the corner of his eyes, and he’s grinning like he’s never going to stop.


	8. Third Down Conversion

Tony lost his virginity at fourteen, to a kid named Ty who had basically Tony’s same life, except as far as Tony knew, nobody was hitting him at home. (But then, as far as Ty knew, nobody was hitting Tony either.)

Tony can picture Steve’s face, if Steve knew this. He would think fourteen was too young. He would think it was weird that Ty was two years older, never mind that Tony was smarter than any twelve sixteen-year-olds strung together, or that he’d known Ty his whole life.

When Ty was seventeen, someone outed him. There were photographs, Ty’s head tilted back against an alley wall, getting a blow job from a redhead with leather bracelets around his wrists and skinny jeans and blue Chuck Taylors.

It was okay.

It was mostly okay.

Just because you slept with someone, that didn’t make it a promise.

Obie called to check that Tony was all right, and that’s how Tony found out that Obie knew he’d been sleeping with Ty. “Why shouldn’t I be all right?” he said, defensive. At fifteen, he hadn’t yet learned when to back away from a lie that wasn’t working.

“Oh, son,” said Obie.

“I’m not your son,” Tony said.

Even now, grown-up and cynical, he sometimes wishes he were. Obie plays the long game, and you have to know what your place in it is, but when he’s drunk, he just goes to bed, and if your work’s not suffering, he doesn’t care what you’re doing on the side. (He always knows what you’re doing on the side.)

“Did you know he was fucking all those other boys?” Obie asked.

 _All_ those other boys.

Dodging the question, Tony said, “Does Howard know?”

Yes, Howard knew. Had seen the pictures. Obie thought Tony shouldn’t maybe see Howard for a little bit, while he cooled down. “He doesn’t know anything about you, though,” Obie said. “You want to keep it that way, or—”

“Yes,” Tony said, fast.

“Okay,” said Obie. He paused. He said, “If you want me to be keeping secrets for you, you’ve gotta hold up your end, too. Get that degree and get working, right?”

 _I am,_ Tony wanted to say. “Yes, sir.”

The official decree came down from Howard two days later: Tony wasn’t to see Tiberius Stone again. Howard didn’t want his son mixed up with that sordid business. They’ve seen each other a few times in the years since, always furtively. They email, sometimes, talking shit. They have phone sex if one of them’s feeling horny or lonely or both.

 

When Obie called on Christmas, he knew about Steve.

He knew about Ty and he knows about Steve.

Of course he does. How fucking stupid for Tony to think that he could have one thing, ever, that belongs only to him.

After Tony thanked him for the quadski, Obie said, “How’s your football player?” and Tony, older and less stupid now, gave a provocative grin that Obie couldn’t see but could certainly hear, and he said, “Ener _get_ ic.”

“I don’t want to see you slacking off, kid.”

“Have I been?” Tony asked. “Come on. You know me.”

“Okay,” said Obie. “Don’t let it become an issue to your work, though, you hear me?”

“When do I ever?”

Obie laughed. “Fair enough, Tony-boy. Fair enough. You have a good Christmas.”

Like there had ever been a chance of that.

 

The day after Christmas, that morning, as soon as he gets back from New York, Tony hires a team to sweep his apartment for bugs. They find two cameras in the main room of the loft, plus another one in Happy’s apartment, downstairs.

Tony pays them in cash, and they remove the camera from Happy’s place and one of the ones from Tony’s. Tony disables the audio input from the second camera, puts it back where he found it, and hangs a sign in front of it, blocking the eye.

The sign says, PERVERT.

 

Steve and Tony spend New Year’s Eve together—not in New York fighting crowds, which Steve confessed he didn’t want to do, but wrapped up on the couch watching the ball drop on a projector on Tony’s walls. Steve says, “I _wondered_ why you didn’t have anything on the walls!” and Tony says, “Yep, this is why.”

It’s the first time since high school that Tony hasn’t been to a party at New Year’s. He does miss it, sort of, moving to a bass line that pounds through his bones, dancing with a thousand other people he’s never met before and will never see again. Maybe he can fly Steve down to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.

At midnight, Steve takes Tony’s face in his hands and kisses him very gently. “Happy New Year,” he whispers. “Tony Stark.”

They fall asleep tangled together on the couch. Because he doesn’t deserve this, the warmth and Steve’s eyes, Tony’s phone rings at 5:30 in the morning. “Fuck you,” he says when he answers.

“Language,” says Obie.

“I’m sleeping,” Tony grumbles. Under him, Steve inhales sharply. Tony puts his head down on Steve’s chest to hold him still, and props the phone against his ear. “What do you want?”

Obie says, “You watching this?”

Tony groans and rolls off of Steve, catching himself with his free arm. He sits on the floor with his phone and searches “Howard Stark” in the news because this is not his first time around this particular block, and he is not the only one who likes to be with thousands of strangers on national holidays.

Behind him, Steve sits up too, one leg either side of Tony’s body on the floor. His long, strong fingers dig into Tony’s shoulders, rubbing.

It’s cell phone footage. Howard screaming, swearing. He’s drunk, of course. Maybe the girl in black has spilled something on him, or mixed up a drink. She’s standing in the wreckage of a drinks tray, and she’s crying, stammering out apologies.

Tony’s breathing isn’t steady. How many years since he stopped apologizing, two now? One and a half? Sorry, I’m sorry, please don’t, Dad, please—

Anyway, it never worked.

In the video, Howard spits at the girl’s feet. He does that when he’s angry. The rhythm of Steve’s fingers, pressing into the knots in Tony’s shoulders, hasn’t changed at all.

Tony can’t look back at Steve. If he looks back at Steve, even in the darkness, he’ll see his face, and he doesn’t want to. _This is who made me._ Tony ditches the video and brings his phone back to his ear. “Seems pretty par for the course,” he says coolly.

“I’m worried about him,” Obie says. They are men confiding in each other now, equals. Of course it’s a lie. Tony isn’t ever what his father and uncle want him to be. He isn’t even really Obie’s nephew. “All the drinking, and now this. He’s losing all sense of how his behavior reflects on the company. On you, kid.”

 _On you,_ Tony thinks. “You want me to go see him?” His throat is tight, but he can hear his own voice calm and disdainful, exactly how he wants it.

Obie sighs. “I want you to think seriously about what you want this company to look like when you’re running it.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Obie, he’s drunk, he’s not—developing Alzheimer’s or some shit. You think he’s going to sign anything over to me?”

“I’m talking about your future,” says Obie. “I don’t mean today, I don’t mean tomorrow. But I want you thinking about what this company’s going to look like when you’re in charge. You’re going to have to fill some pretty big shoes, you know that?”

Yeah, he knows.

When he doesn’t answer, Obie sighs again. “Look, we’ll smooth it over, get the girl to say she’s—well, whatever the fuck, a PETA activist or something and she threw a drink on your father on purpose, to—doesn’t matter. Whatever we decide to have her say. We’ll deal with it.”

“Sounds great,” says Tony. Pushing his luck, he adds, “Not sure why you needed my input at that at five in the fucking morning, but it sounds really great.”

A pause. “You still got your boy?” Obie says.

God, the way it sounds when Obie says it. “Since when do you give a shit?”

“Since we’ve got enough going on and we don’t need some sad little blond Christian orphan going to the press saying how much you paid him to fuck you.”

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” Tony says. He’s on his feet without intending to be, across the room before he can think about it. This can’t touch Steve, he won’t let it, the filth of Stark Industries.

By the sofa, Steve stands up too. His face is in shadow, and he’s scratching the back of his neck uncertainly. Steve who is good. Steve who is clean of this, and can be forever, if Tony lets him go.

(Tony, who is not good and not clean of this and he never has been, feels his throat close at the thought of giving up Steve. Not yet, please God not yet.)

On the phone, Obie takes a second to answer. Tony’s given too much away, reacting like that. He knows better, he fucking knows better. “You need to cut this loose before it goes bad.”

Tony turns around, ducks his head, and says quietly, so Steve can’t hear, “He wouldn’t, okay?”

“You’re not that naïve,” says Obie. “Tony. We’ve been down this road before. It’s not reality, it’s the circus. People say things they wouldn’t say, to get in front of the cameras, have their fifteen minutes, right? And you’re a Stark, you’re a prince. You’re their ticket to fame.”

He wouldn’t.

“I’m looking out for you,” Obie says.

“I know.”

“Be smart,” says Obie. “That’s all I’m asking. Be smart like I know you know how to be. It’s a three-ring circus out there, and you’re my best guy, Tony-boy, I want to keep all that off you when I can.”

“I know,” says Tony again.

“So listen to your uncle Obie, huh? Cut it loose. Don’t give those vultures a reason to come circling around over your ma’s old school.”

Tony says goodbye dully and tosses the phone onto the breakfast bar. Tired, he’s tired. He’s tired of this.

_You still got your boy?_

He wants to beat Obie to death for saying it like that, for seeing something ugly when he looks at Steve. He wants to stand over Obie and say, _Don’t talk about him, don’t you ever even fucking look at him._

He’s cold, and his mouth tastes like bile.

“Do you have to go?” Steve says, his voice small.

“What?”

“Do—you asked, um, if you have to go see him. Do you have to go see him, your dad?”

“No.” Tony wraps his arms around himself, against the chill. In the dark, he sees the shadow of Steve pick up the blanket. Steve can’t traverse the loft in the dark as confidently as Tony can, avoiding Dummy, and the wastebaskets, and the power cords. He has to pick his way, carefully, feeling with his feet, over to where Tony’s standing, to put the blanket around him.

“Okay, genius,” says Steve. “You’re not freezing to death on my watch. You’re a billionaire, you can’t heat the place any better than this?”

“Happy controls the thermostat for the building. I think he’s part yeti. Steve—”

Steve cups Tony’s hands in his, brings them to his mouth to blow warm air on them, then rubs Tony’s fingers like frostbite might be a serious concern. “Yeah?”

“Do you ever think, like.” Tony lets himself be steered in the direction of the bedroom. “Like maybe you’d be better off without me.”

Steve pushes him, gently, down onto the bed and lifts the covers up for Tony to put his feet under them. “Guess what,” he says.

“What.”

“I already know what I’d be like without you. I have twenty years of experience.” Steve settles into his side of the bed and pulls the blankets over them both. His right elbow bumps against the back of Tony’s skull, just a little, and his left arm pulls Tony into his body. “And guess what else.”

Despite everything, Tony is smiling. “What.”

“Didn’t care for it. Nobody to kiss on New Year’s.”

“I am a good kisser,” Tony admits.

“You’re a good everything,” says Steve, “so shut up and to go sleep.”

Steve goes to sleep; he always falls asleep easily, and becomes immovable, a person-shaped blanket of warmth. So far it hasn’t occurred to Steve that not everyone might find it so simple to lose themselves to sleep. And it is, it’s easier when Steve’s there, like his presence somehow quiets the thoughts that go spinning and chasing each other in Tony’s head.

But Tony can’t fall back asleep. Last year was the year he met Steve, and this year is the year he will lose him.

 

Tony asks Steve to come to his next brunch with Pepper and Rhodey. They go into the city for it; Pepper’s reserved a private room at some Mexican place with fair trade avocadoes, a stipulation that is enormously important to Pepper this week. On the way in, Tony lies on one of the seats with his head in Steve’s lap. He pretends to take a nap, because the alternative is admitting how much he likes the feeling of Steve’s fingers stroking his hair.

When they get there, Pepper and Rhodey are sitting at their table, neither of them smiling. Pepper’s head snaps up at Tony’s arrival, and she gets to her feet, shoving her chair with nearly enough force to topple it backward. “What the _fuck,_ Tony?”

“Uh, this is Steve?” Tony says.

“Hi, Steve,” says Pepper, flashing him her corporate smile. “Your boyfriend’s an asshole.”

“I’m not an asshole,” Tony protests. “Steve, this is—”

“We,” Pepper says, still furious. Then she takes a deep breath in, lets it out, and speaks in a more measured voice. “Tony, I believe we agreed some time ago that you would not ever put me in a room with Ty Fucking Stone unless you and I had discussed it beforehand. Do you remember that conversation?”

Tony’s obviously missed something. “You see this is not Ty who’s with me, right? This is my boyfriend Steve Rogers who I’ve been—”

“Who’s Ty?” says Steve.

Just when Tony thought it wasn’t possible for Pepper to be any angrier. “Sometimes,” she says icily, “I truly do not think you have a heart in your chest at all.”

Rhodey whistles softly, Tony takes a step back, and Steve puts his arm around his shoulders. “I don’t think Tony knows what you’re talking about,” Steve says evenly, “and taking that into consideration, you’re saying some pretty cruel things right now.”

For the first time, Pepper looks properly at Steve. Her eyes sweep him up and down, and even though Tony’s pissed off, he’s also sort of achey with pride, knowing exactly what Steve looks like, the way everything he’s thinking is good and honest and every bit of that is written across his face. He likes having Pepper see that someone like Steve—but there’s no one like Steve—likes Tony, wants him, defends him. Pepper opens her mouth to say something, and then her eyes focus on something behind Tony.

Tony spins around.

_Fuck._

Ty looks the same. It’s been a year since they saw each other, longer since the last time they had sex, but Tony’s always swamped by muscle memory when he sees him. Ty’s hand pushing his head down, his teeth against Tony’s neck, the way he kicks in his sleep like he’s running from something. When Tony was a kid, Ty always seemed like the better version of them: Dark hair standing up in all the right places, hands never dirty with grease and oil, tie at just the right angle, eyes the dark blue of the sea where Tony’s are a nondescript browny gray.

“What are you doing here?” asks Tony, stunned.

“I was invited,” Ty says. He has a slurry, lazy voice that makes everything out of his mouth sound like sex.

“Steve Rogers,” Steve says, offering his hand to Ty. “Nice to meet you.”

“No, no, no. He’s not staying. You’re not staying. How did you even know where we were going to be?” Tony wants to shove Ty away from Steve, except Ty would just laugh.

“Tony,” says Ty. “Don’t make a scene.”

He means: Don’t give me a reason to make a scene. Tony knows it, and when he glances back at Pepper, it’s obvious she knows it too. They both sigh, him and Pepper, and Rhodey rolls his eyes and tilts his head all the way back.

Ty shakes Steve’s hand. “Ty Stone,” he says. “Are you the flavor of the week, Steve Rogers?”

“Oh shut up,” says Tony. He tugs Steve’s arm away and takes him to sit at the table, between himself and Pepper. Damned if he’s going to make Steve sit next to goddamn Ty Stone. “Steve, these are my friends I told you about. This is Pepper Potts, she works for me—”

“For my sins,” says Pepper. She smiles at Steve for real, and he smiles back at her, uncertain.

“—and this is James Rhodes, my buddy Rhodey, Guys, this is Steve. Pep, Rhodey, you remember Ty Stone.”

“Only by reputation,” says Rhodey.

Tony wishes he’d said it another way. For years, Ty’s kept his mouth shut about Tony, and Tony doesn’t want to remind Ty that he has something on him.

“Well,” says Ty, “I took the liberty of ordering bottomless mimosas all around, so I’m sure this is going to be much less awkward in a few minutes. Steve, I hope you’re going to help me make this a nice meal. Pepper and Rhodey don’t like it that I got to their boy before they did, is all.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Tony says.

(He’s never fucked Pep or Rhodey, never tried to, that isn’t what they are to him.)

(Okay, he kissed Rhodey once, when he was really, really drunk, but he doesn’t remember it, and Pepper hauled him off immediately and gave him a talking-to about appropriate boundaries, which he also does not remember, although he remembers the blistering recap of it the following morning.)

Under the table, Steve takes Tony’s hand and squeezes it.

Brunch is—it could be better. No matter how many times Tony pulls away, Ty won’t stop touching him, his shoulder, his hand, his thigh. He smirks at Steve every time he does it. Every time, Steve’s jaw tightens, and doesn’t Ty just love that.

“Steve,” he says, drawing out Steve’s name, deep in his throat, “don’t be jealous. I’ll always be the guy who popped his cherry, but maybe _you’ll_ be the one he finally tells Daddy about.”

Rhodey says, “Hey Stone.”

Ty ignores him. “Did Tony tell you he’s going to come clean to Howard?”

“Stone,” says Rhodey, very military. Tony wants to tell him not to waste his time. The only way to stop Ty from doing or saying exactly what he wants is to ignore him. His fingers hurt where they’re clenched around Steve’s, and it occurs to him that Steve’s been eating left-handed so he won’t have to let go of Tony’s hand.

It steadies him, a little.

“We’ve discussed it,” says Steve.

“You’ve dis _cussed_ it,” Ty repeats.

Pepper is chewing her crab cakes like she wants to murder someone. It’s actually going to be a miracle if they all get out of here without anyone murdering anyone, and Tony can’t decide if he’s going to end up being the victim or the perp.

“You’ve discussed it?” Ty says, again, this time to Tony.

“I think what Steve means,” says Pepper, “is that we’d all like you to change the subject.”

Yeah, fat fucking chance of that.

Ty leans onto the table, his elbows clinking against unused silverware. “Steve, you should know not to listen to anything this one says when he’s got his cock in your mouth. I mean that’s just lesson one.”

Tony drains his mimosa glass and fills it up again from the pitcher. “Fuck off, Ty,” he says, loose and easy. Not caring is the only way to make Ty shut up.

Ty leans back, and Rhodey, who has that pinched line between his eyebrows that’s just about his only tell when he’s upset, asks Steve about the Super Bowl. Of course, Ty tries to catch Tony’s eye, to make fun of this, but Tony’s not on Ty’s fucking team, and Ty can know that right the fuck now.

“I think it’s going to go to the Dolphins of Miami,” Tony says gravely, “or the mighty Giants of—”

Steve laughs. He’s laughing harder than he needs to, because he’s tense, but it’s his good laugh anyway, and the knot in Tony’s stomach eases a little. “You’re a jerk. Tony’s teasing me,” he says to Ty, “he doesn’t really think the Dolphins have a shot at the Super Bowl. I’m calling Bengals/Panthers.” It’s pretty much perfect: good manners, and a reminder to Ty that Tony and Steve are their own unit, with their own jokes.

“Clash of the kitties,” offers Tony.

Pepper giggles. “This sounds adorable.”

“No way the Bengals beat the Pats,” says Rhodey.

“Strength of schedule,” Tony says, waving a hand.

Rhodey looks like him like he’s grown three heads, and Steve bursts into his most exuberant laugh. “I taught him one thing!” he protests to Rhodey. “One thing about football, and now he’s a menace.”

“He means I’m right,” Tony tells Pepper, and to Steve, “You haven’t just taught me one thing.” He says it as undefended as he knows how, which isn’t anywhere near the way Steve says the things he says.

But.

But, it’s something he can give Steve, to set against—well, Ty.

But, Steve’s eyes are soft when he looks at Tony. “Yeah,” he says.

And Tony honestly doesn’t know whether he means yeah to the schedule or yeah to the other thing. Either way, it feels like Steve’s leaned over and kissed Tony wet and open in front of all of them.

The moment’s over in a second, and Steve’s back to bickering with Rhodey about high-level football shit Tony doesn’t understand. Pepper, who is a saint, asks Ty some questions about Viastone, and the three of them are able to discuss financial shit while Steve and Rhodey lean back in their chairs and talk football behind Pepper’s back.

It’s okay. It’s not what Tony imagined, but it’s okay. Steve keeps making Rhodey laugh, and Ty’s nicer when he’s drunk, always has been. He even flirts with Pepper a little bit, not nastily, just the way Tony and Ty always flirt at parties. Tony sort of wants to pull Steve away from Rhodey and say, _See? He’s not so bad._

When the waitress comes with the check, Ty says, “Tony’ll cover me.”

Tony rolls his eyes and hands his credit card to the waitress. Pepper raises an eyebrow; she’s used to him paying with cash. But it feels—rude, somehow, to Steve, to have that much money on hand, when he knows that Steve has so little.

“Thanks, baby,” says Steve. He kisses Tony’s cheek. Tony wants to put his fingers to the place Steve’s lips touched. 

When he looks around, Ty’s making the face that says he wants to burn something down. “Know what I wonder?” he says. “I wonder what Tony’d say if I told him I’m coming to Nelson every first of the month and he has to blow me or I tell Howard he’s fucking a football player.”

Tony goes cold.

“Cause I think he’d be down for it,” Ty says, “no pun intended. What do you think, Steve-o?”

“Shut the _fuck_ up, Stone,” Rhodey snaps out.

Steve’s face is flushed with anger. “I think,” he says, “that whatever he’d do, it’d still say a lot more about you than it would about him.”

“It was a joke,” says Ty. “My God, T, how do you let _this_ put its dick in you?”

“I also think,” Steve says, “that if you ever tried to blackmail my boyfriend into having sex with you, I’d beat the living hell out of you. And I think the police in Nelson wouldn’t do a damn thing about it. Because I think I’m the best cornerback the Badgers have had in a decade, and I will be next year too, and I think I’m untouchable in that town. That’s what _I_ think.”

Rhodey chokes on his drink and turns away. Pepper watches Ty with an expression of perfect, serene contentment.

“Well,” Ty says. “Aren’t you just the fucking king of your pathetic little hill.”

“Actually,” says Steve, gently, “Nelson’s in sort of a valley. But otherwise, yeah. I am. It’s been super nice meeting you.”

Tony doesn’t get to say a real goodbye to Pepper or Rhodey, because Ty sticks around all the way up until Steve and Tony get back in the limo. Ty waves to Happy, like the shithead he is, showing off to Steve that he knows Happy from way back. Not that Steve’s angry at Happy for waving back, but just—he wishes he hadn’t done it. He wishes Happy had just looked blank.

“Good seeing you, Ty,” Tony says, lying.

“Next time I guess I’ll ask Mr. Stane if you’re single first,” says Ty, sounding almost human.

“Like he’d know,” Tony says. (Lying. Obie always knows.)

“Well fuck it,” says Ty. He offers his hand to Steve, and Steve shakes it and smiles at him. It’s not Steve’s regular smile, that sweet, certain thing. It’s—Tony sort of hates it. Okay, he all the way hates it. In the time he’s known Steve (which, okay, yeah, is not that long a time), he’s never seen him do anything that didn’t seem completely sincere, until this, now.

In the limousine back, Tony says, “I don’t know how the _fuck_ he found out where we were going to be, but I’ll find out and just—fucking kill whoever’s— I didn’t mean to just, I wouldn’t drop you into my shit with Ty without any warning.”

Steve puts both of his hands on Tony’s shoulders and pushes him backward, down onto the seat. Tilting his head backward to the privacy partition, he says, “Is the, um.”

“Yes, the um is indeed,” says Tony. “The um always is when I’m with you, because I am a handsy fucker and I can’t be tr—”

“So then can I suck your cock?”

Holy _fuck._ Tony manages a strangled noise and not much else.

“Or, if this isn’t—” Steve swallows. “I’ve been—thinking about it. Just. I’ve been thinking about it. If now’s not a good—”

Tony chokes out a garbled sort of _yesfuckJesusSteve,_ and Steve smiles with his lips and his September-blue eyes and goes to work on Tony’s belt buckle. He undoes the belt and the button on Tony’s pants and glances up at Tony for approval, and _God._

“Please,” Tony says. “God, please.”

Steve nuzzles his hard cock through the fabric of his pants. “You always beg me,” he says, and for fuck’s sake, what sort of monster has Tony created, he pulls Tony’s zipper down with his teeth, and it’s the hottest fucking thing Tony has ever seen. “I like it,” he adds.

Tony’s going to come in his pants, at this rate. From Steve’s fingers, maddeningly gentle and slow, getting his pants down, taking Tony’s cock out through the gap in his boxers, wrapping around the base. Tony whimpers.

Steve says, “Baby,” and he licks wetly all the way up, root to tip, and _fuck,_ his hand is moving, slicking precome and his own saliva over Tony’s cock, and he looks up, he looks up from what he’s doing and meets Tony’s eyes and his lips curve in that way that Tony can’t fucking resist, and then he shifts his body slightly and swallows Tony down.

It’s _obscene,_ everything about him right now, kneeling on the floor of the limo, bent over Tony’s body, his mouth and his hand moving rhythmically on Tony’s cock. Steve swirls his tongue over the head, sucks and licks and tastes, and he keeps making these soft noises in the back of his throat, barely more than breaths of air—

“I’m going to—Steve, your mouth, God, I’m going—”

Steve doesn’t seem to have heard. What finishes Tony, though, is that Steve’s turned on too, that his body is jerking, just a little, just enough for Tony to notice, rubbing against the car seat as if he needs to fuck something and can’t quite restrain himself.

“Jesus, I can’t—” and Tony’s hips snap up, as he comes painfully hard and long into Steve’s, God, virgin fucking mouth. And Steve, his Steve, chokes a very little and then presses Tony down into the seat with his hands and swallows everything like he was born to it.

After—some time after, because Tony keeps shuddering with the memory of the curve of Steve’s mouth and it’s fucking up his ability to focus or think or anything—after, Tony remembers to say, “Hey. You. I need to—”

“Ah.”

“Ah?”

“Yeah, it’s, um—” Steve’s blushing. “More of a do-you-have-a-tissue situation?”

Tony lifts his head. “Really?”

“Shut up.”

“No, just—” Tony points with his chin, which is about the most movement he thinks Steve should reasonably expect from him after sucking his brains out through his dick, at the bar, where there are some napkins tucked into cups. Steve fetches one and turns his back to Tony to clean himself up. “Just, yeah, I knew my dick was magic, but—”

“You’re the worst,” says Steve.

“At not being hot, yes,” Tony agrees.

Steve crushes his dirty napkin into a clean one and shoves them both into the little trash receptacle. “Was that—”

“Yes,” Tony says, fast. There’s a lot in this life he can’t control, but he can keep Steve from ever wondering if he’s good enough at sex. (Though to be honest, Steve could basically just sit perfectly still and look the way he looks, and it would be enough to keep Tony in orgasms for the rest of his natural life.)

“Just.” Steve ducks his head. “Your ex—”

Tony wants to say that Ty wasn’t much for _giving_ blow jobs. More of an enthusiastic and pushy recipient. Except that feels like the kind of thing that would turn Steve’s face all concerned and anxious and angled, and Tony wants Steve’s face to stay soft and post-coital. “Steve,” he says instead. “Have a heart.”

“What?”

“You fucking slay me.” Tony reaches a lazy hand over to turn Steve’s chin towards him. Deliberately, he gives Steve his slowest, most lascivious smile. “That was honestly I swear to God the best thing that has ever-the-fuck happened to me, and I do not have enough brains left to tell you exactly how fucking hot you are with your mouth full of my cock, so please shut up about Ty and come hold me.”

They cuddle up together on the back seat, and Tony falls asleep in Steve’s arms.

 

While they’re at brunch, twelve American soldiers are killed by extremists in Afghanistan using Stark Industries tech.

While they’re driving home from brunch, Howard Stark gets asked about diversity among SI employees, and he says he’s not going to compromise on quality just so some kid named Ahmed can feel good about himself. At SI, he says, they just hire whoever’s best for the job.

These two events have nothing to do with each other except timing, but someone was recording Howard on their phone, and the news outlets keep replaying the video when they’re reporting on the Afghanistan bombing.

Obadiah doesn’t call Tony, and Tony doesn’t call anyone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Police should police football players without regard to their local fame. Steve thinks so too.
> 
> Also, Clash of the Kitties would be an amazing name for that Super Bowl, and I give everyone permission to use it if the Bengals and the Panthers do end up contending for the title.


	9. Play Clock

The diversity thing doesn’t go away. It so much doesn’t go away that Obadiah jokes that Tony should throw a press conference and come out as gay, just so the media will know how inclusive Stark Industries can be.

“I’m not gay,” Tony says icily.

“Bisexual, whatever,” Obadiah says. “It’s a _joke,_ Tony! Get a sense of humor.”

But nobody’s sense of humor is very much in evidence on this one. There’s a “Best for the Job” social media campaign where Stark Industries employees talk about incompetent SI employees they have known, and about their experiences of prejudice at SI facilities and events. Feminist groups are calling for Howard Stark to apologize, donate money to one of a vast number of charities devoted to equality in the workplace, or resign as head of the company.

Fat fucking chance.

The silver lining is that nobody in the SI marketing department thinks that Tony would be valuable in combatting this, which means he doesn’t have to go to New York and do press conferences or charity shit. He works out a suitable comment for his PR rep to supply to anyone who asks, and gets back to his core mission of making large things small and harmless things dangerous.

If Steve knows about what Howard’s been saying, or if he knows about the dead soldiers in Afghanistan, he doesn’t bring it up. Tony should be grateful for it, but instead he’s just resentful that Steve still has to do football team shit even though it’s the offseason. If anything, he has _less_ time for Tony than he did last semester, because now he’s got a part-time job in addition to football shit and classes shit. He leaves for the track when Tony’s still asleep, and Tony always wakes up hours later expecting Steve to be there and feeling like shit that he’s not.

One night when they’re in bed, sleepy and post-coital, Tony asks. It’s really fucking hard to make the words come out. “Could you,” he says, and gets stuck.

“Hm?” says Steve, half asleep already.

“You always leave before I’m awake. You’re this sneaking-out ninja.” _It makes me feel like your embarrassing one-night stand and I hate it._ This is why people tell lies. The truth just tells people where you’re weak.

“Don’t want to wake you.” Steve’s mumbling.

“You could.”

“Hm?”

Tony wriggles a little, just so Steve will be awake enough to finish this conversation. Steve starts nodding vigorously against Tony’s back, which is a sure sign that he’s trying to pretend to be awake while not actually being all that awake.

Fuck the whole idea, anyway.

Except that the next morning, he wakes up to Steve’s lips brushing against his cheek, and it’s not even light outside. Tony’s face breaks into a smile even before his eyes are open. “Hey,” he says, bleary. “You did the thing.”

“Yeah.” At first Steve is just an outline in the dark of the room, but then he drops back down on the bed, on top of the covers, bending his head to nuzzle into Tony’s shoulder.

“Stay.”

“I can’t, baby, I have to meet the guys at—”

“You make me really happy.” He wants to take it back as soon as it’s out of his mouth, but it’s three in the damn morning probably. Even in this light, he can see Steve’s head come up, searching for Tony’s eyes like that’s a possibility at probably three in the morning. A second later, Steve is on his stomach next to Tony, one arm slung over Tony’s stomach, his head on Tony’s chest. It’s three in the morning, probably, and Tony’s not awake enough to be self-conscious, and he closes his arms around Steve ferociously tight.

Stay, stay, stay.

Steve whispers, “You make me really happy, too.”

And even though he _just said_ he was happy, and for no reason he can discern, Tony suddenly wants to cry. He says, “Don’t go do track.”

Steve tilts his head up and kisses the underside of Tony’s chin, which is the only part of him he can reach without moving them. “Okay.”

“Wait, really?”

“Yeah. You’re comfy. So I miss one day. I like you more than track anyway.” Steve kicks at the covers until he’s able to get under them, then snuggles back into Tony. He’s warm.

When Tony said _you make me happy,_ he meant something between _please don’t leave me_ and _I love you._

He wonders what Steve meant.

“You’ve been really tense,” Steve says. “Is it—I mean, is it anything I could help with?”

Maybe early risers are all afflicted with this difficult-to-control urge to say _I love you_ loudly and often. Maybe that’s why Tony became a late riser in the first place. He has to reel it back in twice before he’s able to say, “It’s just company shit. I like that you don’t know. It’s like, I have this one part of my life that’s not all fucked.”

“I’m.” Steve pauses. “I want to—I could be part of the other stuff too. I mean. I want to be—be here for you, or whatever, even for the stuff that is. Fucked.”

“I just,” says Tony. “I just want this one clean thing. What’s so bad about not _knowing_? If I could not know anything about the damn company, I’d do it.”

“Does Ty know?” Steve says in a small voice.

“Oh, Jesus, Steve. You think I tell Tiberius _Stone_ my business and I don’t tell you? He’s a—we’re not even— No way. I mean, he probably does know, because our fathers know each other, but like. Come on. No.”

Steve sighs. “So your dad knows about him?”

“No. I told you, Howard doesn’t— Anyway, it’s the company that’s— Can we just stop talking about this?”

“Okay.”

“Look, I—I don’t know how to—”

“When, um.” Steve swallows. Tony can feel the bob of his Adam’s apple. “So, when my—when my dad died.”

At once Tony is overcome with remorse, and he tucks chin against the top of Steve’s head, protective. “Baby, don’t, look, I didn’t mean to make you—”

“No, I wanted to say— When he died, I hadn’t told him I was gay. I was so scared he’d be—I don’t know. I was scared he wouldn’t—I don’t even know what. I didn’t even know what I was trying to protect myself from. And now I won’t ever be able to tell him.”

There’s so much pain in his voice. _I’ll take that from him,_ Tony thinks, as if that were a possible thing.

“And I just wish I had. And if you don’t tell your dad now and give him the chance to be good about it, you might never get the chance.” He says all of this in a very fast rush, and then, “Okay. That’s all.”

They lie there together, matching breaths, while Tony tries to think of one damn thing to say. Because he knows exactly what he’s trying to protect himself from. Except he’s an adult, a grown-up whose chest tightens every time his father walks into the room, who has to stop himself from flinching when Howard gestures too forcefully. The truth is he’s scared of Howard.

The truth is too fucking pathetic to hold it up to the light of day.

“It means a lot,” Tony says at last, carefully, “that you told me.”

Steve nods. “You mean you’re not going to tell your parents about me,” he says, cutting straight through to the thing that matters.

“With them, it’s—it’s complicated.” He can hear how weak that sounds. How much like an excuse “With my dad and the company. They have a lot of shit going on right now, and it’s just complicated. You know?”

“Yeah,” says Steve. He sounds so fucking sad.

To Tony, that “yeah” is the first tick in a countdown clock. When it zeroes out, Steve will be gone. When Steve is gone, Tony will look back on this morning and he’ll be glad he didn’t say _I love you,_ because then Steve won’t know, and Pepper won’t, and Tony will figure out a way to forget, how excruciatingly much he cares about this and wants to keep it.

 

When Steve spends the night at his dorm room instead of at Tony’s place, because he and Clint have to work on a presentation they’re doing for some English class, Tony doesn’t act like a spoiled child. He calls Pepper specifically to ask how not to behave like a spoiled child in this case.

“Wow,” says Pepper. “Seriouser and seriouser.”

“Shut up.”

“It’s great. I think he’s really good for you.”

Tony’s throat hurts. Of course Steve’s good for him. He’s the one who’s terrible for Steve. But he doesn’t say this to Pepper, because she’s his friend and she’d have to reassure him, and there isn’t any reassurance he can believe.

His intentions are good, but he can’t sleep anymore without Steve next to him, and he’s gotten bad at running on empty. He makes reservations for a nice dinner for the two of them the next evening, after Steve’s exam is over. He’s not nice to Steve at dinner. Steve asks about his work, and Tony says, “Frankly there’s not a whole lot I can tell you about it that you’d get.”

It’s true. Not because Steve’s stupid (he isn’t), but because it’s technical. It’s boring. But the way Steve nods, it’s like Tony’s sucker-punched him, and Tony doesn’t, somehow, have the mental resources to explain how what he meant is different from what Steve heard.

Tick.

 

The reporter catches him off guard, but he should still know better. She’s there when he comes out of his apartment, and he and Steve are supposed to meet at the park that’s halfway between Steve’s dorm and Tony’s place, and if Tony’s not there when Steve gets there, Steve will come to his apartment, and the reporter will see him and she’ll wonder who he is to Tony and Steve is crazy about Tony and it’s all over his face and she’ll _know_ who he is to Tony, so Tony says, “That’s really not my area.”

“Not your area,” repeats the reporter. She’s with _Forbes._

“Yeah. Excuse me, I’m late for—”

“Mr. Stark, can you clarify what, exactly, isn’t your area?”

“Uh,” says Tony. “Anything? I’m strictly R&D.”

“Then would you be willing to comment,” the reporter says, “on the development of the weapons recently employed to kill twelve US troops in Afghanistan? Were those weapons something your R&D team had a hand in, Mr. Stark?”

He’s late already. “Of course our development team works on the weapons our company produces, they don’t come out of nowhere. If you could excuse me.”

She doesn’t follow him. By the time he reaches Steve at the park, he knows how bad he fucked up. He doesn’t call his publicist. He doesn’t call Obadiah. Everything’s ending, and he lets Steve buy him a greasy dinner, and he holds his hand even though they’re in public.

They don’t have sex that night. Tony runs Steve a bath and then goes back to his bed and curls up there, miserable, trying not to think. When Steve comes to bed, Tony pretends he’s already asleep. He doesn’t want to talk about it.

Steve stands by the side of the bed watching him for so long that Tony gets nervous and peeks through his eyelashes. He can’t make out Steve’s features. Eventually, Steve reaches down to brush Tony’s hair away from his temple, and drops a kiss there. He gets into the other side of the bed and pulls the covers over both of them.

He doesn’t touch Tony.

Tick.

 

Obadiah just wants him to keep his fucking mouth shut. He’s done enough. Keep his fucking idiot mouth shut and get his fucking work done and don’t try to get cute with reporters, for fuck’s sake.

He’s nervy and uneasy, miserable inside his own skin. His stomach is all screwy, and he can’t keep food down half the time, and he’s drinking more than he tells Steve about. When Steve’s there it’s quieter and easier, but it’s not quiet or easy.

He said he didn’t want Steve to know about what’s happening with the company, and he doesn’t. He doesn’t. He wants Steve not to know for twenty-three-and-a-half hours out of the day, and for the remaining half hour, he wants Steve to wrap him up in his arms and kiss his forehead and tell him it’s going to be okay. The company won’t be investigated by Congress for the Afghanistan thing. Howard won’t resign because of the diversity thing. Tony won’t have to take over.

He wants Steve to tell him that if Ty tells Howard they used to fuck, Steve won’t mind when Tony lies through his teeth and swears to his father he’s never touched a guy, never would, come on, Howard’s seen all the girls he’s been with.

He misses a video conference meeting. At the time he’s supposed to be talking with his team (who between the four of them accomplish maybe— _maybe_ —a third of what Tony could accomplish in that time span, if he had his workshop), he’s jerking off in bed to the memory of Steve’s bruised wet lips wrapped around his dick, because thinking about sex turns off everything else, at least for a few minutes.

When Tony gets out of the shower, he’s got a furious voicemail from Obadiah asking him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing. First the interview. Now this. Obadiah says, “We agreed the work wasn’t going to suffer because of your boy. Do I need to come to Nelson and have a conversation with him about this?”

Tony barely makes it to the bathroom before he’s vomiting up everything in his stomach.

Tick.

 

Tony’s leaning backward against the kitchen counter, reading the _Wall Street Journal_ over Saturday morning omelets. Steve keeps glancing at him across the breakfast bar, then looking away when Tony looks up. Finally he says, “Steve. What?”

“I don’t understand why you stopped talking to me,” Steve bursts out.

“Baby,” says Tony, “we talk all the time. You let me talk _too_ much, actually, I’m pretty sure.”

Steve says doggedly, “I mean about whatever’s going on with you. The company stuff. I, I thought I was supposed to give you space, or, or, like I thought I was respecting your wishes. But I’m—you’re scaring me.”

Tony laughs. “What?” He puts another bite of omelet in his mouth, like this doesn’t matter, like his heart’s not racing.

“Like I know you’re not eating anything when I’m not here,” says Steve. “And you’re just—you’re all off.”

“Aw, Steve.” Tony crosses to where Steve’s sitting on his stool and smooths a hand over his hair. He makes his voice all honey and persuasion. “You’re the one who’s always off. Running track and doing weights and classes and that stupid job. I’d pay off your stuff if you let me, you know I want you with me all the time.”

It’s not working. It’s nowhere near working. Steve’s face has fallen into its miserable angles, and he gets up, backs away from Tony a little. “Stop,” he says, ragged. “Stop doing that, stop—don’t pretend everything’s normal, you know it’s not my job that’s the problem.”

There’s a fly buzzing around Steve’s head. It keeps nearly landing on his face and then flitting away. Tony glances around for a flyswatter.

“Look at me!” Steve says. His voice cracks like a teenager on the last word, and he blushes bright red.

“Sorry,” says Tony, bringing his eyes back to Steve’s face. “Baby, I’m sorry, okay? Let me—I’ll make it up to you. Whatever it is. What if we went into New York, or—”

“I don’t want you to make it up to me.” Steve cracks his knuckles absently. The sound always makes Tony’s spine crawl. “I want you to—you’ve been—I’m worried about you. You know I’m right to be worried. There’s, like, a hundred whiskey bottles in your recycling bin, and I know you’re not sleeping, and you haven’t said _anything_ to me, and I’m—I don’t know what to do, okay? I don’t know what to do.”

Tony bites his lip. “Maybe I just want you to be there. Maybe just you being there for me is what I need right now.” He knows how well this sort of thing works on Steve. He’s been using it for the better part of a month, when Steve asks about what’s going on, if he’s okay.

For a second he thinks it’s going to work again. But then Steve says, “And I. I just. I hate being a secret. I really fucking hate it.”

“There it is,” says Tony, rocking backward on his heels.

The fly settles on Steve’s chin, and he brushes it away. “What does that mean?”

“It means I knew this wasn’t just about me.”

“I didn’t say it was just about you,” says Steve. “It’s about you too. I hate being in a different compartment from the rest of your life. I can’t help with anything that’s making you miserable, and you can’t tell anyone you’re dating a guy, and I just really hate that.”

“Different compartment, is that what Sam told you to say?” Tony says nastily. He can see from Steve’s face that he’s right, and it pisses him off. “I didn’t say you could talk to your friends about me. I never said I wanted some Psych 101 bullshit from your fucking football team.”

A muscle jerks in Steve’s jaw. “Sam graduated.”

Fuck. He should have known that. “Point still stands, Rogers. If I want to get analyzed I’ll see a therapist, that’s not what I have you for.”

“What you _have me_ for?” says Steve, his voice a little louder than usual.

The fly zips between them, close to Tony’s face. Steve reaches up to bat it away, and Tony flinches backward, hard. Not the kind of flinch you can explain away. It’s fast and instinctive, and it’s obvious he’s doing it in the expectation of a blow.

It’s really fucking obvious.

Steve jerks away from him as if Tony were radioactive.

For a moment, neither of them is equal to it. They stand apart, eyes wide and uncertain, and Steve keeps reaching for Tony’s hand and then aborting the movement.

 _I take it back,_ Tony wants to say.

Very carefully, very neutrally, Steve says, “What was that?”

“What?” says Tony. Playing for time. The way he does with his father.

“You just—” Steve swallows, hard. “Who hit you.”

Tony isn’t going to answer that. There is a way to salvage this. He is a genius and he’s motivated. “You, if you kept on swatting at that fly like that. Aren’t athletes supposed to be coordinated?”

Steve no longer looks unsure. His features have resolved into a mulelike stubbornness that Tony doesn’t recognize. “I’m not stupid, Tony. Who _hits_ you?”

“That,” says Tony, “was an attempt at a subject change. Take a hint, Rogers. Not every part of my life is your business.”

Steve isn’t even listening to him anymore. He’s thinking back, reevaluating old events in the light of new information. Tony can see it in his face. 

“That black eye?” Steve says. “When we met?”

Yes. That black eye. Howard was drunk, he was always drunk, and yes, that black eye.

“I told you,” Tony says, but he doesn’t say it strong enough. He can hear how his voice sounds. Pleading. _I’m the same, I’m not broken, don’t pity me, nothing’s changed._ “Dummy got me in the face when we were doing clean-up.”

“Don’t lie to me,” says Steve. His voice unsteady. Fists clenched. “Is it someone you’re seeing?”

To Tony’s utter surprise, that’s what hurts. Or, no, well, everything hurts, everything feels like falling, but this hurts the most, maybe: Steve believing that Tony might be fucking someone else on the side. Here Tony has been giving Steve everything he _has,_ and Steve still thinks—

 _You get mean when your feelings are hurt,_ Pepper has told him.

“Get off your high horse,” Tony says. He goes for the jugular because that’s the only way to make Steve drop it. (Because Tony refuses to be the one who slinks away heartbroken.) “I’m not exactly going to tell you everything I want when you can’t even take one finger, let alone let me fuck you. So, yeah, sometimes I get it somewhere else, and it gets a little rough. Not like you’d be up for it. You’re hot but you’re a boring fuck.”

Steve’s eyes.

This is done, has to be, because he’s not letting Steve—he’s not letting _anyone,_ but especially not Steve—see how broken he is, how weak not to leave.

But Steve’s _eyes._

Eventually Steve takes a painful breath, and he says, “Okay.” His voice is very small. That is a thing Tony has done, made Steve’s voice sound like that, defeated.

“Okay then,” says Tony. “So are we done here? Can I get back to my goddamn breakfast?”

Steve doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t say anything, and he just leaves.

Boom.


	10. Sack

The thing is, it hurts anyway. Steve can know that Tony was trying on purpose to hurt him, and it can still hurt, and hurt, and keep hurting. _You’re hot but you’re a boring fuck,_ and Steve can’t stop thinking about the surprised joy in Tony’s face the first time Steve sucked him off, and wondering whether any part of that was real.

He hates himself for thinking about this at all, the lowest possible priority, the thing about that day that matters by far the least.

(It’s a week ago now but it feels longer, impossibly long. Steve has to keep reminding himself that he got along without Tony for years and years and that was okay and it can be okay again. He has to keep reminding himself that he’s only known Tony four months and it’s nothing, a blip, nowhere near long enough for Tony to have become as necessary as breathing.)

But if he stops thinking about how much he misses Tony and how much it hurt for Tony to say what he said. If he reminds himself that Tony pushed him away because he was freaked out—which is _so obvious,_ even to Steve—then he starts seeing, over and over and goddamn over, in excruciating slow motion, the way Tony shied away from him. One arm came up to protect his head, and Tony’s whole body curved in on itself, bracing for impact.

Then the question becomes, did Tony flinch like that out of habit, or did he think, did Steve make him think, did he ever have any reason to think—

Was he absolutely definitely flinching only because he’s been hit before, or is there some part of him that heard Steve raise his voice and thought that Steve would ever—

When his train of thought reaches that particular station, it’s sort of a relief to Steve to circle back to his own hurt feelings.

It’s his fault for asking such a dumb question, for not being able to stop wondering if Tony was cheating on him with Ty Stone, who’s gorgeous and put-together and on Tony’s level in a way Steve won’t ever be. Who goes so far back with Tony that he can say _Tony’ll cover me_ and flash Tony his careless, handsome smile and not think about it again. Who can talk to Tony and Pepper about industry stuff that Steve can’t even begin to understand. (And Tony knew it, Tony handed him off to Rhodey because he knew it.)

And he wants it to be someone temporary. He wants it to be someone he can walk up to and hit a few times and then it’ll be done and Tony will be safe and he won’t have black eyes and he won’t flinch away from Steve and—

He calls, but Tony won’t pick up. On Tony’s voicemail he says, “Baby, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please call me back. I’m so, so sorry. I shouldn’t have left. I miss you and I’m sorry.”

Tony doesn’t call back.

If they’re broken up, he can google the company. It’s not a betrayal if there’s nothing between them to betray.

What he finds is bad. Steve doesn’t know anything about how to run a company and media relations, and even he can see how bad it is. Stark Industries is facing the threat of congressional investigation and a possible loss of their government contracts. Just about every outlet Steve can find talks about Tony: The alcoholic (he’s not) playboy (he’s _not_ ) teenage son of CEO Howard Stark is the one who built the weapons that killed twelve Americans. There are old videos of him at nightclubs and galas and NASCAR races, more messed up than Steve’s seen him in real life, eyes too bright, voice too loud, feet unsteady.

He’s so young.

He’s fourteen in some of these videos. Someone—not one person, but a lot of people—saw a fourteen-year-old kid getting this drunk, this high, with people ten and twenty years older, and nobody did anything about it. Nobody stopped it. Nobody saved him.

And at home, Howard—

There was a bug.

Tony knows that. (Right?)

There was a bug flying around the room, and Steve was trying to swat it out of the way. He wouldn’t, he’d never, touch Tony in anger, and Tony knows that. He does. He must.

“You okay, man?” Clint asks, after they get out of the showers. It’s roughly the same question—though with a lot less yelling—that Coach Buccianti’s been asking him after every practice this week. Steve’s been dropping balls and getting shoved aside by the youngest and rawest of the offensive players in Oklahoma drills all week. Coach is pissed at him, and Steve’s pissed at himself.

“Yeah,” says Steve.

“Yeah?” says Clint.

Usually, when Clint sees that you want something left alone, he leaves it alone. Steve must look pretty bad for Clint to ask a second time. He glances around, lowers his voice. “Tony and I,” he says, but he has to stop, or he’ll cry.

“Oh man,” Clint says. “You want to talk about it?”

His eyes stinging, Steve shakes his head. Clint claps a hand on his shoulder. “Well, fuck that,” he says. “Let’s call up Peggy and go get drunk, yeah?”

The bartender at Lynch’s that night is a friend of Steve’s, which means a supply of free beer that even Peggy’s alcohol tolerance isn’t equal to. “Never mind about that rich prick, my darling,” she says to Steve, pounding a fist on the table. “You deserve better. Fuck him.”

Clint elbows her.

“He’s not,” says Steve miserably.

Being drunk isn’t helping, and he can’t tell them the truth, Tony would hate for them to know the truth. If Steve tells them, Tony will be angry with him later.

“No,” Peggy insists, toppling her head onto Steve’s shoulder. “No, no, Clint, I know it’s hard for Steve to hear this, but it’s the difficult truth, you see. That we have to push past.” She demonstrates a push with her hands. “He was _very_ lovely and charming but—”

 _Is_ lovely and charming. Is, is, is. This isn’t finished, it’s fixable. Steve can fix it, he can have Tony back, his fast, dazzling smile and his clever fingers.

“Hey Pegs,” says Clint. “Can you keep a secret?”

God, Tony tried to tell him, and Steve said to try harder. He said Tony would regret not trying harder with his father, not telling him the truth.

“YES,” says Peggy.

And if Howard Stark is hitting him now, it means he’s been hitting him all along. It means that terrifyingly young boy in the Daily Mail and US Weekly, who nobody protected and nobody saved, it means he was running from that.

From Howard, and Steve told him to try harder.

Steve misses the secret. He’s not even sure Clint’s telling Peggy something true. Possibly he’s just trying to distract her from Steve’s breakup. Whatever it is, Peggy bursts out laughing, puts her hands flat on the table as if she has to cling to something stable or lose her balance altogether. “Nonsense,” she says.

“Hey.” Clint takes a swig of his beer. “Just cause I don’t go talking about it all the time. _Some_ of us know how to keep our shit to ourselves.” This seems to be directed at Steve, but Steve doesn’t have the energy to chase down what they’re talking about.

“Since _when_?” shrieks Peggy.

“Louder, Pegs, they can’t hear you in Omaha.”

“Come on, you know I’ve no idea where Omaha is, Clint, so that’s not playing fair. This is rubbish. Steve. Are you hearing this?”

Untruthfully, Steve nods.

“Since I was fifteen probably,” says Clint. “I met this guy who was like—” He twists his mouth sideways, like he knows he’s said more than he intended, and doesn’t finish the sentence. He takes a long swig of his beer.

“Oh, that he likes guys?” Steve says. “I knew that.”

“What!” Peggy cries. She makes the vowel so British it’s almost like she’s making fun of British people, not just speaking the way she naturally speaks. “This is a genuine betrayal. Have you told Sam as well, then? Am I the only one you’ve not mentioned it to?”

With an enormous effort, Steve manages to think of what he would say to this, normally. “Clint didn’t tell me. I pay attention to stuff. The offensive coordinator, right?”

“What!”

“Dude, I was helping you,” Clint complains.

“Clint,” says Peggy. “That man is twice your age, are you seriously letting him get a leg over when you could be dating young hot things like Steve is?” When she says this, she glances sideways at Steve, which is how he knows she’s sorry for talking crap about Tony before.

_You’re hot but you’re a boring fuck._

“I have to.” Steve gets up. “I’m just going to. The bathroom.”

He stumbles outside. He’s drunker than he intended to be. If he were sober, he wouldn’t go back to the stoop where he met Tony, because that’s just stupid, that’s rubbing lemon juice in a wound that already goddamn hurts bad enough. But he’s drunk, and he hunches down on the stoop and fishes out his phone and calls Tony.

“Pepper Potts’s office,” says a voice that’s too bright and airy for one in the morning. It’s not Pepper Potts’s voice.

“Hi,” Steve says. “This is Steve Rogers. Um.”

Something occurs to him, suddenly. The solution to a mystery he wasn’t aware his brain had been working on. He says, “From Mr. Stane’s office. He’s asked me to confirm the location of Tony’s next brunch with Ms. Potts and Lieutenant Rhodes.”

He doesn’t expect it to work. He’s just drunk. He’s so drunk that when the woman on the other end of the phone pauses, he almost tells her that it’s crazy for someone’s assistant to have an assistant.

But after a pause, Tony’s assistant’s assistant says, “I believe that brunch was canceled, actually. They’ve rescheduled it for the sixth of March, and they’re going to be at Dovetail at noon. Is that going to create a conflict?”

“Nope,” says Steve. “Thanks, then. Okay, bye.”

He hangs up.

It would not be fair to say that Steve has been obsessively googling Tiberius Stone. Not _obsessively._ But he has searched his name a time or two. He knows things about Tiberius Stone that Tony didn’t tell him.

What Tony told him about Tiberius Stone is this:

1) He’s an asshole.  
2) Tony didn’t invite him to brunch, because see #1.  
3) Tony used to let Ty fuck him. (Tony’s words.)  
4) He got really pissy about Tony being in Massachuetts for school. (Because see #1).  
5) Someone took pictures of him fucking someone else’s face (Tony’s words), and Howard forbade Tony to see him anymore.

Ordinarily, when Steve considers these facts, he just gets pissed off that Ty had sex with Tony before Tony was old enough to get his goddamn learner’s permit, then cheated on him while he was getting his Ph.D.

Now, he’s running back some things in his head, tossing in a new variable, and coming up with something different.

Someone told Ty where they were having brunch. And it wasn’t Tony, and it can’t have been Pepper or Rhodes, who if either of them could shoot flames out of their eyes and incinerate Ty, they would have done it.

And Ty said, “Next time I’ll ask Mr. Stane if you’re single first.”

And someone outed Ty to the press, four years ago. Someone knew where he would be, who he’d be with. Someone knew to be there to take pictures.

And there’s a sign that hangs in Tony’s apartment, facing a high corner, and it says PERVERT. Tony’s apartment doesn’t have decorations, and that would be a weird decoration anyway, and most of all, it’s facing away from the room, not towards it. And before that sign went up, Tony barely let Steve into his apartment at all.

“Uncle, second father, whatever,” Tony said about Obadiah Stane, and Steve stupidly, stupidly thought that made him Tony’s ally, instead of another damn shark in a tank full of them.

There are a hundred other things, but Steve keeps thinking of the way Tony sleeps, balled up tight and defended. When Steve woke up in the night and saw Tony like that, he would slide over to Tony’s side of the bed and carefully unfurl him. Sometimes Tony woke up, and then they’d be occupied, hands and mouths and dicks, for the next hour. Other times, Tony would rumble a small noise in the back of his throat and roll over, cuddling into Steve’s shoulder. Having Tony in his arms like that, safe, uncomplicated, made Steve feel chivalrous and important, like he just pulled Tony back from the brink of something really bad.

Even when it was happening, Steve knew how dumb of a thought it was. He thought it was dumb because it’s just how Tony sleeps, it’s not a metaphor for something. And it’s still dumb because of that, but now he knows it’s also dumb because the bad stuff isn’t in the past for Tony the way it is for Steve. For Tony the bad things are his family, the people who are supposed to protect him. They have him and they’re keeping him and they won’t ever stop hurting him and there isn’t anything Steve can do about it if Tony won’t answer his _God damn motherfucking phone._

Steve starts to dial another number, then thinks better of it. He brings up Pepper Potts’s number, which Tony gave him for emergencies, and keeps it up on the screen. He goes into Lynch’s, just briefly, to tell Clint and Peggy that he’s still here and he’s fine and he has to make a call. Not to Tony, he promises.

If Obadiah Stane wanted to mess around with Tony and Steve’s relationship (which Steve tends to think he did, and how stupidly ironic that what Obadiah Stane couldn’t do himself with Tiberius Stone, Steve managed all on his own), he’d have been looking for ways to make Tony not like Steve. He’d be tracking his phone, his movements.

(Steve’s not telling this to Clint and Peggy. It sounds paranoid, he can hear that it does. He’s also never been more sure of anything in his life.)

“Hey, man, can I borrow your phone?” Steve says to a guy in a Badgers jersey. “Mine’s dead, I’ll get it right back to you.”

After the guy extracts a promise from him to sign the jersey and get Clint to do it too (nice that someone’s not still pissed at Clint over the Rutgers game), Steve goes outside with the phone and calls Pepper Potts’s number on it.

It’s a betrayal, but he doesn’t know what else to do.

“Pepper Potts,” she says when she answers the phone, like she’s already a CEO and it isn’t the middle of the night.

“Hi,” Steve says. “It’s, uh, it’s Steve Rogers? I’m Tony’s—I’ve been seeing Tony.”

Pepper’s voice turns icy. “I know who you are. We met, as you may recall. It is one in the morning.”

“No, yes, I— No, I know we met. I’m really sorry to call so late. I wasn’t sure if you’d, um—because you’re obviously really busy, and I don’t know how many people Tony—”

“If you need something from me, Steven, you may not want to begin by calling my best friend a slut.”

“I didn’t,” Steve protests.

“Really,” says Pepper. “Because that certainly seemed to be the implication. And I _know_ it’s what you said to Tony. Tip for you? Best friends talk to each other. In the interest of saving time, why don’t you tell me what you want so I can have the pleasure of telling you in detail why I’m going to do everything in my considerable power to make sure you don’t get it?”

Steve takes in a deep breath.

“Tick-tock.”

“I think,” Steve says. “I think— Look, Tony’s going to be really mad at me for saying this to you, but—”

“Oh spare me,” says Pepper. “I’m hanging up.”

 _Dammit._ “I think Tony’s father hits him,” Steve says in a rush.

On the other end of the phone, there is silence. Finally, Pepper says, “Did Tony tell you this?”

“No,” Steve says. “It’s just what I think. Is he— I’m worried. I haven’t heard from him, and I’m just worried. Is he okay?”

“He is not okay,” Pepper says, with cold precision. “I doubt he’s slept more than twenty hours cumulatively since you broke up with him—”

“I didn’t—”

“—and he’s drunk off his ass, and—” Pepper sighs. “Steve, he’s an adult. He’s eighteen, he’s almost nineteen. If Howard were hitting him, he could just leave.”

“I know.”

“So what makes you think—”

“He just sort of—disappeared the last time Howard came home. I barely heard from him, and when he got back he was just really, he was like, I don’t know. He was off. And when we first met, he had a black eye, and he said it was from an accident in the workshop, and I believed him. But he, this weekend when we were having breakfast, I went to swat a fly away from his face, and he—” Steve’s voice catches.

“What?” says Pepper. She hasn’t relented, but her voice has something else in it now.

“He just. His shoulders, he.” He can’t say it. Pepper’s a smart girl, she can read between the lines. “Like he was expecting me to— And when I asked about it, he got— He said—some things, and I just, I shouldn’t have let it go, I know I shouldn’t have left, but I didn’t know how to—”

“Okay. Okay.” Pepper sighs. “God knows I’ve been on the receiving end of Tony Stark’s incurable tendency to be as hateful as he can to the people he really needs. I’ll look into it. Thank you for notifying me.”

“In person, though, okay?”

“Okay,” says Pepper. “If I can.”

“I think Mr. Stane’s—” It really does sound too paranoid to say. “I don’t trust Mr. Stane.”

There is a long silence. “Okay,” says Pepper.

“And your office has to protect Tony better,” says Steve. “I talked to them just now and I said I was from Mr. Stane and they, the girl who answered, she told me where Tony was going to be and who he was going to be with and when. They have to be better. That guy’s—he’s screwing around with Tony’s life, and your office can’t just—tell people stuff.”

He expects Pepper to yell at him. But she doesn’t, at all. When she answers, “Thank you for notifying me,” she sounds—surprised, more than anything.

“And.” Steve bites his bottom lip, to stop himself from getting teary. “Look, if Howard— Can you make sure Tony’s not alone with him?”

Pepper sighs again. “I don’t have superpowers, Steve. I can’t make Tony do anything he doesn’t want to do.”

“I know.”

“Okay then,” Pepper says. Her inflection is Tony’s, exactly; she’s picked it up from him. It hurts to hear it, that small familiarity. “I’m hanging up now, Steve. I’ll call if I think it’s the right thing to do.”

“Thanks. Thank you. For believing me. Okay. Bye.”

When Steve gets home that night (by taxi because they’re all way too drunk to drive), he gives Clint the top bunk, the sleeping one, and sits on the bottom bunk in the dark. He wants to hear Tony’s voice. He misses him and he wants to hear his voice.

Tony’s Christmas present is still in the corner of the room, wrapped up messily, one of the pieces of tape that holds it together coming unstuck. At Christmas Steve wasn’t sure if they were doing presents, and Tony never gave him one, and it felt pointed and grabby to bring him one. Now it’s just—

Steve lies down on his side and tries to pretend that he has Tony in his arms. He tries to imagine Tony pressing back against him, muttering sleepy endearments, because Tony’s impossibly sweet when he’s half-asleep. But he can only think of the videos he’s watched on the internet in the past week, and they blur together in his mind. Howard Stark screaming at a crying waitress, only instead of a waitress it’s Tony, fourteen and glassy-eyed from drugs or alcohol or both, cringing backward, scared, scared, scared.

 

Steve’s phone vibrates his ankle in the middle of his bio lab. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize, but he gets his things together and leaves, with an apology to his instructor. “Family emergency,” he says. His heart is pounding. _Be Tony be Tony be Tony be Tony._

“This is Steve,” he answers, out in the hall, leaned against the cold institutional tile.

“Steve, it’s Happy Hogan.”

Steve’s heart stops. “Is Tony—”

“I just remembered,” Happy says, loudly, interrupting him, “you were going to come by with some burgers for Tony today.”

No, he wasn’t. Steve feels like he’s traveled back in time, except even when he was dating Tony, this wasn’t ever a thing that happened. Happy calling him. Happy arranging dates? “Um.”

“Now, his dad swung by,” Happy says, very casually and _oh,_ so Happy must know, too, that their phones might not be secure, “so he might need to take a rain check, but I know he’d still want to see you and have lunch.”

“That’s nice!” Steve says. “His dad!” He sounds like a lunatic, but he wants Happy to know that he gets what they’re doing right now, lying for the phones.

“Sure! Great thing for Tony to get to see him. But I know he’ll still want those burgers. Let me know where you are and I’ll come pick you up. I’m about ten minutes out from campus. I got the burgers.”

“My dorm. I’m—I’ll be at my dorm by the time you get here. Thanks, Mr. Hogan. I appreciate the lift.”

Steve takes the ten-minute walk back to his dorm at a run. As he’s running, he imagines nudging Tony with his elbow and saying _See, all that getting up early to go run track, it’s a pretty good thing after all, huh?_

His heart pounds, waiting for Happy, clutching Tony’s stupid Christmas present, and he tells himself it’s because of the running. It’s not because he’s scared. He’s not scared. He’s ready. He’s braced. Let Howard Stark put one finger on Tony, touch a hair of his head, Steve doesn’t care that he’s a millionaire, he doesn’t care about anything except that he’s not going to stand there and let Tony get hurt.

Oh God, he wants to see Tony again. He wants to touch him again.

_You’re hot, but you’re a boring fuck._

It’s like poking a bruise to check if it still hurts. (It still hurts but Steve’s hurt feelings aren’t the point so shut up shut up shut up shut up.)

When Happy arrives, he lets Steve sit in front again, and it makes Steve feel weirdly hopeful. “Is Tony okay?”

Happy puts the car into gear. “He’s been busy working on some important projects for Mr. Stane. You won’t have met him, Obadiah Stane. He oversees most areas of the company. Fingers in a lot of different pies. It’s important for Tony to keep up.”

Across the gear shift, he meets Steve’s eyes, and Steve nods, though he’s not sure exactly what he’s agreeing to. Yes, I know who that is. Yes, we’re talking in a code and I understand the code. Yes, I’m on Tony’s team and you are too and now we both know it.

The drive back to Tony’s place feels like it lasts forever, way longer than the twelve-or-so minutes it actually is. When they get there, Steve grabs the bag of fast food (it smells amazing and is starting to stain the paper bag greasy) and his Christmas present and goes flying up the stairs to Tony’s place. He doesn’t knock, he just goes in. Tony never locks the damn door anyway.

“Brought you some greasy food!” he proclaims. He expects to have to make a small show out of being surprised to see Howard Stark, but when he does see him—sitting on the sofa with one ankle resting on the opposite knee—he is surprised, after all. How normal Howard looks, his hair parted tidily, his impeccable suit. “Oh, sorry,” he says.

Distracted by Howard, Steve doesn’t see Tony’s first reaction to him coming in. By the time he turns around to him, Tony’s gotten over it, whatever it was. Tony’s a surprise, too, in a way: Steve’s been worrying about him so much, imagining him young and scared and crying, that he’s not prepared for the real Tony, poised and angular.

“Shit, Rogers,” Tony says. “You’re going to think I’m an asshole, but I totally forgot. We’re going to have to reschedule. Dad, this is Steve Rogers, that cornerback for the Badgers I was telling you about. Steve, this is my father, Howard Stark.”

Howard swings himself up from the sofa. He’s taller than Steve by an inch or two , broad-shouldered like Steve, and he offers Steve his hand and a smile that’s so much like Tony’s Steve can’t breathe for a second. “Nice to meet you,” he says. “Anthony tells me that you’re likely to go pro next year.”

Trying not to make it a big deal out of not shaking Howard’s hand, Steve crosses to the breakfast bar and sets Happy’s take-out bags on it. “Brought some greasy French fries,” he says, casual.

“This isn’t actually,” Howard begins.

“Actually, can I talk to you outside for a sec, Tony?” Steve asks.

Tony’s voice tightens a little. “It’s really not a good time, Rogers.” He takes a hand off his coffee cup to reach for the Burger King bag, then quickly pulls it back. But Steve has enough time to see that his fingers are trembling badly, and once he’s seen that, the lines of tension in Tony’s shoulders and jaw become obvious.

“It’ll take two minutes, I swear,” says Steve.

Tony’s eyes are nakedly beseeching, and Steve feels like the worst person there ever was, but Happy asked him to come, and he’s just not leaving. He isn’t.

They go out on the landing, and Tony hisses furiously, “If I tell you to leave, you fucking go, Steve!”

“I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“Oh, please. How do you think I managed for the nineteen years before you showed up?”

 _Got hit._ “Your hands are shaking. He—” When Tony makes a jerky, abortive movement, Steve realizes he’s forgotten to whisper, and lowers his voice. “He’s a bully and you’re obviously scared of him, and I’m not—”

“This is my life,” whispers Tony, “and you need to give me credit for knowing how to live it. If he thinks you think you know something about him—” He swallows. “Or if he figures out I’ve been letting some football jock fuck me, then trust me, it’s going to be worse later, so can you let me just—”

“I can’t.”

Tony’s short of breath now, as if he’s just run up the stairs. Steve can see the rise and fall of his chest. “I’m asking you to.”

“I know,” Steve says. “But I—I’m not leaving. I can’t.”

“You—”

The apartment door opens, and Steve turns around fast and then takes a step backward onto the landing, jostling Tony backward too. He has good feet, and it looks like he’s just lost his balance, but when Tony catches himself against the stair rail, Steve’s standing slightly, not showily, between him and Howard.

“Looks like you won’t have to cancel with your friends after all,” Howard says brightly, phone in hand. “There’s a work matter I need to attend to. Tony, have Happy drive you into the city, we’re at the same hotel as last time. We’ll need you tomorrow morning, eight AM, no excuses. Steve, it was a pleasure to meet you, I’m sure I’ll be hearing more from you.”

“When you say work matter,” says Tony, stepping sideways, closer to Howard, “you mean prostitute, right?”

Steve tenses, balls his hands into fists. _Try,_ he thinks at Howard. _Just try._

“Cause that’s what I always assume you mean,” Tony adds.

After a frozen second, Howard laughs. “This little shit,” he says, to Steve.

Before Steve can formulate a coherent response, Howard’s halfway down the stairs, and Tony’s shoving at Steve’s shoulder. “Get the fuck inside,” he orders, and Steve obeys. He knows Tony’s mad, maybe even that Tony’s right to be mad, but also—

“What the fuck, Steve?” Tony demands, as Steve closes the door and, carefully, locks it.

“I know. I know.” He wants to apologize, except it wouldn’t mean anything, because he’d do it again, he’d do it every damn time.

“We are _broken up._ ” Tony stalks over to where Dummy is charging and throws a switch on the charging station. “You get that? And you know what, even if we were dating, I’m not the fucking junior partner. You don’t get to overrule my decisions because you think you know better than me. My father, my life, my house, my rules. Got it?”

“Yeah,” says Steve.

Tony rounds on him. “Yeah _what?_ ”

“I’m not—” Steve says. He’s not good at being with Tony when Tony’s like this. When Tony’s transformed into this, this tornado version of himself, that’s when Steve feels the difference between them the most keenly. That’s when he remembers that Tony’s a genius, and Steve’s just—

“What?” Tony says again, impatient.

“I’m, I know everything you said is—is right, and, it’s your life and when, and, I know I don’t get to overrule you. But I—” He has to pause, and swallow, and try again. “You can, you can hate me, you can do anything, but I’m never going to— You can’t ask me to leave you alone in a room with someone I know hurts you. I _can’t._ “

Tony keeps fiddling with his sleeves, trying to get the buttons on the cuffs into their holes. When he speaks again, it’s quieter, and he’s looking out the windows instead of at Steve. “I don’t need a protector. It’s not your job. Not when we were dating, and not now either.”

“You might need a buttoner,” Steve says lightly, reaching for Tony’s wrist.

And Tony pulls away fast.

And Steve’s stomach plunges.

He should have killed him; he should have pushed Howard Stark down the stairs and watched him tumble down them and break his neck at the bottom.

After a second, Tony nods like Steve’s won an argument, and he shoves his left sleeve back to the elbow. The marks of fingers are obvious, red and angry, up the edge of Tony’s wrist to the base of his thumb. Steve runs his hands through his hair, wishing to God Sam were there to tell him what to do, if it’s okay to touch Tony right now.

“Happy?” says Tony.

“No.” Steve can hear how wretched his voice sounds. And now that he has space to think, now that Howard’s gone and his heart’s not pounding, he’s noticing how awful Tony looks. His eyes are shadowed, and he’s lost weight, his collarbone way too prominent at the neck of his button-up. So Steve says, “Want a burger?”

Tony rolls his eyes, but he opens the bag and takes out one of the burgers. “Gross,” he says, around a bite. “It’s cold.”

“Happy got it, not me.”

“No shit.”

Steve’s not sure what that means. Something good? He fishes some fries and barbecue sauce out of the bag and munches on them. He can’t take his eyes off Tony. Finally he says, “I missed you.”

“Yeah.” Tony steals a fry. “I’ve been busy.”

“Anything I’d get?” Steve says. He knows that he sounds pitiful. Somewhere, there’s a part of him that cares about this, but he can’t seem to access it right now.

Tony’s eyes flick up to Steve’s, briefly, then away. “It’s really boring. Just trouble-shooting. Look, I really didn’t need you to come charging in here, guns a-blazing. I am handling my own shit. Okay?”

“I know.” Out of all the things he wants to say, Steve picks the one that hasn’t been said between them yet. “I’m—I’m sorry I asked if you were— I was, I kept thinking about your ex. Ty. And it was stupid and I was jealous that he knows you so well and—so I should have listened to you when you said he was an asshole and you weren’t— I’m sorry.”

Tony shrugs.

Stupidly, Steve is near tears. He shakes his head, forces them back, and says, “I, um, I think maybe Mr. Stane. Your uncle? I think he maybe told your ex where we were having brunch. Like, to—I don’t know. Is it stupid that maybe I think he’s, like, might have had a bug on my phone?”

For a second, Tony doesn’t answer. He’s looking at Steve like he’s never seen him before. “No,” he says, finally. “That’s not stupid. That’s—actually pretty likely. I’ll send you a clean one.”

“That’s not what—”

“What do you _want_ from me?” Tony bursts out, so vehemently that Steve takes a step back.

“Just.” Steve swallows. “I want to be with you. Or if not that then I want, if you don’t want to be with me then I at least want us to be friends. And I want you to be okay.”

“My family shit,” says Tony, enunciating each word viciously, “does not now, nor did it ever, fall within your purview. If we are all setting each other on fire behind the walls of our many luxurious and well-decorated homes, that would still not be any of your business.” Both of them notice at the same time that Tony’s hands are shaking badly. He stuffs them in his pockets. You’d never know from his voice.

“I don’t care about them. I care about you, I—”

“So _don’t._ ” Tony shoves him, hard, hands flat against Steve’s chest. Not expecting it, Steve takes a second to regain his balance. His fingers get tangled in Tony’s, and he doesn’t know if it’s on purpose, if he’s done it on purpose or Tony has or if it’s just one of those things, and he doesn’t have time to think about it because Tony’s mouth is suddenly on his, frantic, demanding.

Yes, yes, yes, yes—

Steve sweeps his tongue into Tony’s mouth, tasting toothpaste and whiskey, and Tony draws away for a thready, imperfect breath before bringing their mouths together again, pressing tightly into Steve, chest and thighs and cock. His hands are trapped between their bodies, and Steve is too desperate for him to pull away even for a second. So it’s only the tips of Tony’s fingers that touch Steve’s face.

Maybe that’s a good thing, because that small, small touch has Steve out of his mind with want.

“Baby,” he whispers, taking his mouth away from Tony’s so that Tony will kiss his jaw and neck and shoulder, so that he can lick into Tony’s ear and feel his body shudder against Steve’s.

 _I know what makes you feel good,_ Steve thinks. Giddy with the power of knowing.

“Yes, yes, fuck,” Tony mumbles, as Steve starts undoing shirt buttons, and then, “Fuck it, just rip it,” and he lets Steve lift him and back him into the nearest wall, as he wraps his legs around Steve’s waist. Even that isn’t enough, even the warmth of Tony’s skin, and Tony’s tongue in his mouth. Steve wraps his fingers around one of Tony’s wrists, to anchor them.

Tony gasps.

Not the good kind.

Steve is conscious of the air’s sudden coolness before he’s conscious of making the decision to let go of Tony. When he looks up, Tony is several feet away, still leaned against the wall where they were making out, his lips wet from Steve’s, half the buttons gone from his shirt. “Come back,” he says softly.

“I didn’t mean to,” Steve chokes. He can’t catch his breath.

“Oh Christ. Just—” Tony puts the bruised arm behind his back. “There. See? Out of sight, out of mind. Come the fuck _back._ ”

If there is a right thing to say, Steve has no idea what it is.

Tony’s voice turns nasty. “Okay, fine, I know you like it when I beg for it. Is that what you want, is that what this is? You want me to get on my fucking knees and beg you pretty-please to fuck me?”

“No, goddammit,” Steve says, furious. Something painful thrums in his chest. “I want you to stop goddamn pretending this isn’t happening. This is some fucked-up shit that you want me to pretend isn’t happening, and you’re not going to—whatever, _sex_ me out of giving a damn about that. And you can do that thing where you’re really really mean so I’ll feel too shitty to keep talking about it, but I’m not—this is _fucked._ ”

“As I’ve said before, Rogers,” Tony says, shrugging on an air of disdain like it’s a clean shirt, “absolutely nobody is making you be here. If I recall, I asked you. Repeatedly. To leave.”

Steve nods. He doesn’t remember the last time he swore that much in one day.

Last week, he tried to look up what you’re supposed to do when people are being abused by their parents. There wasn’t much about it happening to adults, although Tony can’t be the only one. But everyone seemed to say the same thing about listening to the people who were being hit. Listen, listen, listen. Listen to what they say they feel, listen to what they say they want.

So Steve says, gulping a little, because this hurts so _fucking much,_ “I’m, I’m. I’m not going to. I’m. If you say you want me to leave now I’m going to leave but I, I, I’m really worried about you going to New York. With your dad and your uncle. I’m scared for you, and. I. If you need me, if you ever. Need me. For anything, just—please call me. I’ll drop everything and I’ll come. And. You’re like the smartest bravest person I. Know. And.”

“You get that off a website?” says Tony, venomous.

The thrumming thing in Steve’s chest is more than he can take. He manages, “You said not to tell Sam,” and then he’s crying, even though Tony’s the one who—

On his way out, Steve picks up his Christmas gift for Tony, where it leans against the door. The wrapping’s even tattier by now than he remembered, and he’s nearly embarrassed enough to take it away with him. But he gets out the words, “I never gave you your Christmas present,” before he’s out the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no YOU'RE setting up a Clint and Coulson sequel (shut up)


	11. Draw Play

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for non-consensual drug use (benzos), in a non-sexual context.

Steve gets a new phone in the mail. There’s no numbers in the contacts, just a single one in the “Recently dialed” section. No note accompanies it. Knowing Tony, Steve assumes it’s paid for already, the hardware and the plan. He spends an hour going through every app on the phone, trying to find if Tony’s left him any kind of message, apart from the phone number. He knows exactly how pitiful he’s being.

“New phone?” asks Clint.

“Yeah.”

“Guess you don’t have to study for your bio test.”

Steve does have to study for his bio test. “Tony sent me it.”

Clint twists his whole mouth sideways and raises his eyebrows at Steve. It’s what he does when he wants more and doesn’t know what question to ask.

“It’s a clean phone,” Steve explains. He feels like a spy talking about clean phones. “His uncle was maybe doing something with my old one.”

He hasn’t told this to Sam. If he did, Sam would say things that Steve couldn’t deny the truth of but also doesn’t want to hear. Things like, _This shit’s toxic and you need to let it go._ When he said toxic, he would mean the situation, Obadiah and Howard, not necessarily Tony. But still.

Tony’s gray eyes, darkened almost to black.

How easily he made lies sound like the truth.

His smile, his smile, his smile.

“Like bugged?” suggests Clint.

“I don’t know. Maybe just like, he knows who I call and stuff? Or like where I am?”

Clint considers. “So you shouldn’t quit using your real phone when you’re going places you don’t care if he knows about them.”

Huh. “Yeah, good call.”

“They tracking his phone too?”

“I guess,” says Steve. He takes his old phone and his new one and tosses them hand to hand. Clint’s supposed to be teaching him how to juggle, but they’ve never gotten past this step, tidily throwing two things between your two hands. Steve’s not bad at it.

He doesn’t get any studying done that evening. Long after Clint’s gone to bed, Steve’s sitting on the bottom bunk missing Sam and missing Tony and messing around with the new phone. It’s really fancy, nothing Steve would be able to afford on his own, some Stark Industries brand thing that syncs automatically to Steve’s old phone when Steve asks it to, and pops up hologrammy versions of the photos in his gallery.

Eventually, he gets out one of the notecards Sam’s mother sent him for his birthday last year and writes a thank-you note.

_Dear Tony,_

_Thank you for the new phone. I’ve never had a phone this nice. It’s a lot better as a late Christmas present than what I got you. (Did you open your present?)_

_I miss_

There he has to pause, because the list is too long.

_I miss you. I hope you’ll stop being mad at me and we can at least be friends again. Please call me. Call for anything, I don’t care._

He wants to write, Love. He’s pretty sure it would be true. Only, he’s also pretty sure that Tony would think he’s just saying it now to make Tony feel guilty (which isn’t true, Steve doesn’t think it’s true).

_Yours, (however you’ll let me be)  
Steve_

After he goes downstairs and puts the card in the outgoing mail pile on the front desk of the dorm, he’s finally able to fall asleep.

 

He passes the bio test, barely.

He carries two phones around with him everywhere, so if Obadiah Stane’s still paying attention, he won’t know anything’s changed. Right now, Steve has a clean phone and Tony can call him if he wants to, and he doesn’t want that to change. He checks the new phone every time he thinks about it.

“Darling,” Peggy says, gently, “he’s not going to ring you.”

_But he sent me a clean phone, and he left his number in it._

Though he doesn’t say this out loud to Peggy, who is cheerleading for him to find someone new, he does say it on the phone to Sam. He hasn’t been able to talk to Sam much lately, since the draft is coming up. Sam was killing himself for the combine all through February, and now he's spending time in meetings, traveling all over the country to meet with teams in need of wide receivers, and keeping in shape when he's not traveling.

Sam sighs.

“What?” says Steve.

“Just sounds to me like he’s keeping you on a leash in case he decides he wants you after all. That what you want?”

 _Yes,_ thinks Steve. Steve thinks, _Anything._ “I want him back,” he says, his throat scratchy.

“I know, buddy. I know you do. You think that’s gonna happen?”

Steve doesn’t answer. The words _They’re hurting him_ are in his mouth, and if he tries to say anything right now, that’s what’ll come out. And Tony said, he made it completely clear, that he doesn’t want anyone to know.

It’s not Steve’s secret to tell.

“Buddy, just—” Sam’s voice turns away from the phone. “Yeah, yeah, I’m coming, hang on. Steve?”

“Yeah.”

“I gotta go, but listen, find something else, okay? Find something else to focus on. Focus on the game, I want to get you drafted next year, right?”

“Yeah,” says Steve, trying for a laugh.

“You going to trivia with Peg and Clint this week?”

“I don’t really feel like—”

“Go to trivia,” orders Sam, stern. “Hear me? You can’t be moping all the time, you gotta get back to normal. Okay?”

Steve nods.

“Are you nodding?”

“Yeah,” says Steve.

“Idiot,” says Sam.

“Jerk.”

“Love you, buddy.”

“Love you too.”

If nothing else, Sam’s right about trivia. (Sam is, most of the time, right about everything. And an annoyingly good wide-out.) Staying inside and feeling cruddy won’t help Tony, and obviously, it won’t help Steve either.

That week’s trivia is March-themed, which means Steve and Clint fight over who can answer the basketball questions first, and they all just stare blankly at each other for the history ones. Peggy knows a few of them, but Sam was the history guy.

“Bloody disgrace,” Peggy announces after the first round.

“I’m getting a drink after all,” says Steve.

“Hey, no! You’re supposed to drive us home!”

Peggy thumps Clint. “Shut up, we can get a taxi. Let Steve have a drink, he’s a broken man, aren’t you, darling?”

“Yes,” agrees Steve.

“Oh yeah,” says Clint. “Okay, I’ll get your beer. What do you want?”

“Anything. Whatever IPA they have on tap.”

Clint makes a face, but disappears through the crowd. As he’s leaving, Peggy leans forward and puts a hand on Steve’s arm. “You all right?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“Okayish,” Steve says, truthfully.

“All right,” says Peggy. “Is that your mobile, by the way?”

Steve checks, and it’s not. Peggy checks hers, too. “Not me,” she says. “Did Clint—”

“ _Hell,_ ” says Steve suddenly, remembering his second phone. It’s in one of the pockets of his pants, but it’s not vibrating and it probably isn’t Tony and why the hell did he buy a pair of pants with so many damn _pockets_?

He finds it eventually and catches it just before it stops ringing. “Hello?” he says, and he knows his voice sounds frantic, desperate, pitiful, but he can’t help it.

“Steve?” Tony’s voice is quiet.

“Hang on,” says Steve, to Peggy as much as to Tony. He leaves his other cell phone, the not-clean one, on the table as he makes his way outside. King and Country is crowded tonight, it always is for trivia, and Steve has to fight his way out. Luckily, it’s not football season, and the trivia crowd is used to Steve anyway, so he doesn’t have to sign any autographs.

“Tony?” he says, when he’s finally outside. “Hey, hi, how are you?”

No answer.

Steve checks the phone to see that Tony hasn’t hung up. “Babe?” he says.

“Not,” says Tony.

“No, yeah,” says Steve, quickly. “I know. Yeah. We’re just—yeah. Hey. What’s, um, what’s up?”

“I feel bad,” Tony says, like a little kid.

“Are you okay? Did—” Shut up, shut up, don’t ask about Howard, he’ll hang up. “Are you okay?”

Tony says something else, too quietly for Steve to hear.

“What?” Steve stuffs a finger in the ear that’s not pressed to the phone. “Tony. What?”

“Can you come get me?”

“Yes,” says Steve, immediately. He’s picturing Tony drunk and alone, outside of some bar in Nelson, and it makes his heart race. “Of course. Where are you? I’ll be there in—I have my car, I’ll be there in just a second, okay?”

Tony lets out a breath. “’m in New York.”

 _Hell._ “Okay, that’s—listen, I’m in Nelson, but I’m coming right now. Can you tell me where you are?” He can call someone. A taxi. Someone to go get Tony, wherever he is, and take him somewhere safe until Steve can get to him.

“Shitty hotel. I feel bad. I feel bad, I feel bad, I want—”

Steve realizes, incredibly belatedly, that Tony’s probably high. That’s why he doesn’t sound like himself. “Okay, tell me the name. I’m coming right now. It’ll take me, like—maybe an hour, okay? Before I can get there, because I’m in Nelson, but I promise I’m on my way.”

He swings himself into the car, as Tony’s telling him the name of the hotel. He can look it up on his phone when he gets into the city. “Stay on the phone with me, okay?” he says to Tony, signaling the turn out of the parking lot.

“Are you coming?” Tony says.

Steve runs a yellow light. “Yeah, genius, I’m coming. I said I would, right?”

“Mm-hm.” His voice is all faded out.

“Hey!” says Steve sharply.

“Hey!” repeats Tony. In the background, Steve thinks he can hear the clinking of glasses.

“Hey, listen,” Steve says. “Can you just stick with water until I get there?”

“Water,” says Tony scornfully. “That’s not—hey, did you say, did—hey. Could you come get me?”

“Yes,” Steve says, as forcefully as he can. “Yes, I’m coming now. Remember? I said I would.”

Tony mutters something under his breath.

“Tony? Stay on the phone with me, baby.” (Not baby, he said not to call him that.) “Okay? Tony? And just drink water, okay?”

“After this one,” agrees Tony.

Steve can hear the glass tap against the phone on Tony’s end. Hell, hell, hell, hell.

After another few seconds, Tony says, “Hey Steve?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you come get me? I feel bad.”

Steve makes himself breath evenly. If he sounds upset, it’ll upset Tony, and he wants him calm, he wants him to stay on the line and not take anything else and not drink anything else. “Yeah, I will. I’m on my way right now. I just got on 202. Can you say that back to me? What route I’m on?”

“Two two.”

“Yeah. Good, that’s good. Stay on the phone. What room are you in at the hotel?”

“Two two.” Tony yawns mightily.

“No, baby, that’s the route I’m on, remember. What’s your room number? Can you just put your head outside the door and check what the number is, on the door?” Steve drums his fingers on the steering wheel, frantic.

“Kay. Wait.”

Steve accelerates to eighty. His Corolla makes a disagreeing noise. Tony’s end of the phone has gone silent. “Tony?”

Some scrabbling noises. More clinking. Then, “Four-one-nine. Okay. Okay okay okay.”

There’s a long pause. When Steve finally thinks to check, the call has been disconnected. He calls the number back, but Tony doesn’t pick up. Grimly, Steve tightens his fingers around the steering wheel and drives into the night.

 

Tony’s not staying at the same hotel where he took Steve, that time they went into the city. It’s a place in midtown, near Times Square, all the parts of the city that Steve thought were magic when he was little. The lobby is vast and empty, with carpets that shush Steve’s footsteps as he heads for the elevators, trying to look like he belongs.

Upstairs, he finds 419, and knocks, and waits.

Nothing.

He puts his ear to the door, and there’s nothing, it’s just silence. “Tony?” he says, loudly, though he’s scared of being too loud and waking up someone in one of the other rooms, especially if it’s Tony’s parents or uncle.

Nothing.

“Shit,” Steve says under his breath. Wishing he’d worn better clothes, he jogs back to the elevator and takes it down to the front desk. The woman taking care of it looks exhausted, even though it’s only 9 PM, and Steve wishes he could tell her that he feels the same. “Um, excuse me?”

“Yes, sir,” says the woman, straightening. She puts on professionalism and energy like a suit; it reminds Steve painfully of Tony.

“My friend, um, I’m worried he’s sick in his room.” Steve can hear how thin this sounds, how stupid and fake. “Tony Stark, he’s—he called me a little bit ago. He sounded messed up, and he asked me to come. But he’s, he’s not answering his door. He’s in 419. When I knocked. I’m just worried—I don’t know what to do. I think he’s unconscious in there.”

He’s proud of himself for thinking to say unconscious, instead of passed out. Passed out sounds debauched; unconscious sounds scary.

“You’re a guest here?” asks the woman.

“No, I’m—no.” Steve sighs. “Look, you don’t have to let me in the room, I just want someone to check that he’s okay. He sounded really, really messed up on the phone. He’s only eighteen, and I think he was maybe overserved at the hotel bar.”

Those turn out to be the magic words. With a minimum of fuss, another official hotel person is produced to take Steve up to the room and check on Tony. He emphasizes to Steve that he won’t be giving Steve a room key, as that would be against policy.

When they open the room up, it first looks like Tony’s not even in there, and it smells like someone’s been sick. Steve’s heart climbs up into his throat, and he slides past the hotel guy into the room. “Tony?” he says. He has to stop himself from saying, _Babe?_ Tony’s not in the bathroom, and Steve’s legitimately starting to panic until he crosses to the far side of the bed.

Tony’s curled up against the bed, head on his knees, his bare feet just barely not touching the pool of vomit next to him. He looks up at Steve. His eyes are red, his face streaky with misery. “I got sick.”

God, he’s okay. He’s okay, he’s okay. Steve squats down beside him, limp with relief. “Yeah, I see that. You want to get up? We’ll get you a new room?”

“No new room,” Tony says, muzzy, as Steve guides him out from behind the bed, avoiding the mess. “Obie’ll be mad at me if I’m not here. Got too drunk. Fuck-up.”

“No you’re not. You’re terrific. We’ll just get a new room for a minute while they clean this one up, okay?”

The hotel guy looks monumentally unimpressed, particularly when, as they cross past the sitting area, Tony gives up, lets go of Steve’s hands, and slumps to the floor. “’m tired,” he explains, slithering away from Steve’s efforts to keep him upright. “’s comfy here.”

Helpless, Steve looks at the hotel guy. “He can’t stay here. It’s all— He—could I switch him to another room while, he’ll tip you a fortune when he wakes up, he’s really rich but just—”

“’m _really_ rich,” agrees Tony from the floor.

Steve makes himself speak with authority, imitating how Tony would sound. “Okay, what we need is to get him in another room just while this one gets cleaned up. The new room can go on his card, but he has to be back in this one by the morning.” If Tony’s taking drugs, Steve doesn’t want Obadiah Stane to know anything about it.

“Of course,” says the hotel guy. He still doesn’t look any too impressed with Tony, but he doesn’t look fazed, either. This must be the kind of thing that happens for you when you’re super-rich. Requests like this get met and nobody complains about it. “Please stay here for just a moment while I go have a look and see what we have available.”

“Anything’s fine,” Steve says.

After the hotel guy leaves, Steve shakes Tony’s chin. “Babe. Tony.”

Tony wails.

“Hey, just, listen, can you tell me what you took? The guy’s gone, so you’re not going to be in any trouble, okay?”

“Didn’t,” says Tony, stubborn.

Steve sighs. “I guess you can tell me in the morning. Come on, baby, can we get you in a chair for just a second? So when the guy comes back we can go to the new room? Walk to the new room? You think you can?”

Getting Tony up is an endeavor and a half. The hotel guy comes back in the middle of the procedure, with a new room key in hand, and just watches Steve, doesn’t offer to help. Steve doesn’t blame him. Tony is protesting loudly every time Steve tries to move him, and he refuses to get his legs under him. After five increasingly stupid minutes of this, Steve gives up and just scoops Tony into his arms. He’s heavy, but he’s not dead weight, and it’s a good thing Steve hasn’t been slacking on his weight training.

Luckily, the new room is on the same floor, close by, God bless the hotel. The hotel guy turns down the bed, and Steve lays Tony into it, gently.

“Thanks,” he says, to the guy. “Listen, I’m real sorry about this.”

“This is Steve,” Tony says, from his bed.

The hotel guy glances at him. “Okay, kid. Hi, Steve. You’re a good friend.”

“No,” proclaims Tony blurrily. “You have to treat him right, this hotel, set Steve up good. He’s my best, he’s the best-ever thing that, this is who—”

“He’s an affectionate drunk,” Steve says, as if Tony’s words haven’t set off fireworks in his head. “Thanks, man.” He shakes the hotel guy’s hand (bellhop? Front desk something? Concierge?) and locks the door after him, the top part too, so even if somebody else gets Tony’s room key they won’t be able to get in.

He gets Tony’s shirt off first, the one he’s been sick on, then his belt. “Blow you,” Tony suggests.

God. “No.”

“Yeah, but cause.” Tony shakes his head, trying to clear it. “Cause I can’t, I had too much, so I can’t, other stuff. You could fuck me if you want.”

Steve wants to scream. He wants to hit something and then scream until he’s hoarse, but it won’t help, it won’t help, he has to stay focused on the next thing in front of him. The next thing is that Tony’s still a mess and Steve has to clean him up before he can let him sleep.

“That’s a good thought,” he says, “but for another time though. I’m going to just clean you up for right now, okay?”

The washcloths in the bathroom are so pristinely white that Steve almost doesn’t want to use them. But that’s stupid, and Tony’s sick, so he lets the water run until it’s warm and wets a washcloth. He leaves another one under the running tap so it’ll be ready when he is, and goes back to Tony. Very carefully, he cleans his face, his hands and arms.

“I feel bad,” says Tony.

Steve leans down and kisses his damp forehead. “I know, baby, I know you do. We’re going to get you to sleep. Can you tell me what you took?”

“Whiskey.”

“Besides the whiskey?”

“Didn’t.”

“Pills maybe?”

“I _didn’t._ ”

Frustrated, Steve lets out a long breath. “Okay.”

When he comes back from the bathroom with the second washcloth, just to be warm on Tony’s skin, just to feel good, Tony is balled up tiny on the bed, and his shoulders are shaking.

“Shit. Shit.” Steve drops the washcloth and goes to sit on the bed beside Tony. He tries to roll him onto his back, but Tony resists, pulls away from him. “No, Tony, hey, don’t cry, don’t—what are you crying about? I’m here, I came, you’re okay.”

“I hate this.” Tony’s voice is wet with tears, and he won’t let Steve see his face, all elbows and fingers when Steve tries to untangle him. “Nobody ever believes me. Nobody ever believes me, even you think I’m a liar, Obadiah, my parents, Pepper, everybody thinks, everybody—”

Steve has never, ever been more conscious that he can’t screw a thing up. He kicks off his shoes, swings his legs into the bed, and pulls Tony into him. Though Tony doesn’t exactly melt at his touch, he’s not fighting him anymore either. Steve strokes down Tony’s shoulder and arm, careful and slow. “You’re okay,” he says. “You’re okay. I believe you. I believe you, Tony. You’re okay.”

He doesn’t know how long they stay like that, how long Tony cries. Enough time passes that Tony’s shoulders relax a little, and his knees are not so tightly pulled up to his chest. Steve’s heart hurts with the knowledge that Tony could just as easily not have called him, that he could still be an exile from Tony’s life, and Tony would have been in his old, filthy hotel room alone and sad and scared and alone.

“I got you,” he keeps saying. “I got you.”

Eventually, finally, Tony’s breathing falls into a regular pattern. Steve doesn’t let himself fall asleep, though. He doesn’t like any of this, and if Tony really didn’t take anything, that means somebody gave him something. Steve should have thought to grab the bottle of whiskey from Tony’s old room, save some of it for testing later. That’s what a detective would have done. Steve should have thought of it. He’ll get the bottle when the room is ready for Tony to sleep in again.

In the morning they can talk about things to do to keep Tony safe. From Howard, from Obadiah, this snake pit of a life he’s trapped in.

Steve knows this doesn’t mean they’re dating again. He doesn’t have a say in Tony’s life, suddenly, just because of this. He knows when they both wake up in the morning, Tony’s going to be furious with him, because he hates it when Steve sees him weak. He’s going to regret calling him.

Even knowing that, and Steve does know it, he can’t help thinking _what if._ What if in the morning, Tony opens his eyes and sees Steve there beside him and is just glad?

Steve doesn’t remember falling asleep, but the knock at their hotel door jars him awake. He glances at the clock: 2 AM. Tony’s still breathing regularly, not stirring as the knock comes again.

Steve thinks, It’s his father, and gets out of the bed ready for battle.

There never is a battle, when you’re ready for it. It’s the concierge or whatever, coming to tell them that the other room is ready, all clean and fresh sheets and ready to go. “Thanks,” says Steve. “You’ve been really helpful. I know when Tony’s feeling better, he’s going to want to thank you too. We really appreciate this.”

 _We_ is probably a giveaway. Not, maybe, as much of a giveaway as Tony loudly proclaiming that Steve is his best thing, but the hotel guy’s hopefully still chalking that up to Tony being drunk. Not as much of a giveaway as Steve’s face probably is. Not as much as the way he cradles Tony in his arms, taking him back to the hotel room where he’s supposed to be. And Tony doesn’t wake up for it, or if he does, it’s just for a second, a crack of his eyes, and he smiles when he sees Steve’s face, and nestles back down into Steve’s chest.

When Steve sets him down in his newly made bed, Tony doesn’t stir. Steve checks his pulse with one eye on the digital clock. It’s low, but not scary-low.

This time, Steve won’t fall asleep. He pinches his neck occasionally, to keep alert, and he tries to keep his heart from pounding. It’s okay. Tony’s okay. He’s safe, Steve has him, and he’s okay.

 

If there’s a knock, Steve doesn’t hear it. He just hears the door opening, and he realizes, stupid, _stupid,_ that he didn’t lock the latch. He’s angry so fast that he doesn’t have time to remember to be careful, withdrawing himself from Tony and the bed. He’s just up on his feet and in the foyer, crowding a big man he’s seen pictures of but never met backward into the hotel hallway.

“He’s sleeping,” Steve snarls.

Obadiah Stane isn’t as tall as Steve was imagining. But then, Steve’s only seen pictures of him standing next to Tony. His face is dishonest, or maybe that’s Steve’s imagination because he doesn’t goddamn trust him.

Obadiah Stane says, “I’m waking him up.” He wasn’t expecting to find Steve here. Steve can see it in his face, though he’s trying to cover.

“No.” Steve doesn’t let himself be moved, doesn’t shift an inch to let Obadiah in the door.

“Son—”

“He’s sick,” says Steve coldly.

“You mean hung over.”

God, how much Steve wants to punch him. “I mean sick. So he needs his sleep. What do you want?”

“I need to know if he saw Howard and Maria leave last night,” says Obadiah.

“He was with me last night,” says Steve. “We didn’t see them.”

For a second, Obadiah Stane looks murderous, and Steve instinctively braces his feet, tenses his arms. He thinks, _Try._ But Obadiah just says, “Okay. I’ll try Howard’s phone again.”

“You do that.” He doesn’t try to keep it out of his voice, how much he hates this man, what he’s done to Tony, what he’s let Howard do to him.

Obadiah gives a puff of air through his nose, the sound of a laugh without any of the humor. “Son, I’m going to give you this warning once. That boy in there has responsibilities to this family and this company. If you’re thinking about trying to get in the way of that, I’m here to tell you that’s a mistake you don’t want to make.”

“Did you put something in his whiskey?” Steve says flatly.

“Was there something in his whiskey?” Obadiah has the smile of a predator. “Well, I wasn’t anywhere near Tony’s room last night, son. But—am I remembering this right, now, from what you said?—you were.”

Steve stops breathing. He has to make himself start again. “I—”

“Now, now,” says Obadiah, putting up his hands. “From what Tony’s told me, I know you aren’t the kind of kid who’d slip something in his ex’s drink. You’re a smart boy, you’ve got a bright future, that right? You wouldn’t derail that by doing something stupid, I bet.”

_I wouldn’t, I’d never—_

Just for a second, Steve can see it that way, as if Obadiah’s words made it true. He can see himself with a bottle of whiskey on a table beside him, head twisted around to check that Tony isn’t watching. He can imagine Tony waking up, and not remembering the night before, and thinking—and—

If Steve can see it that way, when he _knows_ it’s not true, then—

“You gonna be smart?” Obadiah says. “Head on back to Jersey and let me deal with this?”

“I’m gonna tell you to go to hell,” says Steve. He’s shaking. “And I’m gonna tell you that Tony’s sleeping and you can’t come in and that’s it.”

He keeps eye contact, and he doesn’t unball his fists. _Try._ Finally, after what feels like forever, Obadiah smiles his predator’s smile and says, “Okay, then. You take care, eighteen. We’ll be in touch.”

And when Steve has watched Obadiah’s back all the way to the elevator, when he gets back inside the hotel room where Tony is sleeping, when he slams the latch closed, his breath coming unsteadily, it doesn’t feel like a victory.

It doesn’t feel anywhere close.


	12. Interception

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW for some consent issues around sex. It is consensual, because Steve's a caretaker, but he's definitely being pressured to do something he's not thrilled about, and he should probably say no.

Tony dreams that Steve is holding him. It’s such a good dream that he wants to stay in it forever, but the light is dragging him upward, and he’s half-awake and his head hurts and he realizes there’s someone in the bed next to him, and that wakes him the fuck up in a second because it’s been a long damn time since he went to bed alone and woke up not alone, and he doesn’t fucking miss those days. 

He slams awake and scrambles away. “What the fuck!” he shouts, ready to kick up a fuss, call hotel security.

But it’s Steve.

It actually is Steve.

“It’s me,” Steve says, like he can read minds. “It’s just me.”

He looks terrible. His eyes are shadowed, and he’s got a little bit of stubble—Steve, who’s always meticulously shaven and wrinkles his nose when Tony rubs a few days’ growth of beard against his skin.

“What are you doing here?” When he goes to pick a thing up, he likes it to be where he left it. He left Steve at Nelson. Obie is at this hotel, and Howard, and he left Steve at Nelson.

“I—you called me.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did, too,” says Steve. “You said—you asked me to come.”

“No I _didn’t._ ” Tony’s not panicking. But. He doesn’t lose time. That’s not a thing for him. Okay, yeah, he blacks out sometimes, on alcohol, but he knows how much whiskey he drank last night, and it was slightly less than enough to get him feeling not completely shitty. Not nearly enough to black him out.

Steve sits up, so their faces are level. He bites the side of his thumbnail. “Do you know if you took anything last night? You said you didn’t but you were pretty out of it, so I—do you know if you did?”

No. No no no no no. “I didn’t.”

“Okay.” Steve doesn’t look surprised. He looks pissed. “Where’d you get the whiskey from?”

“Why, you think someone roofied me?” Tony’s joking, but Steve looks at him straight and serious. “Oh come on. I must’ve just—I—”

He doesn’t _lose_ time. That’s why he doesn’t use benzos.

Well, that and a few other things. “Was I, ah, weepy?”

Steve’s eyes flick up to meet his, then away.

Fucking great. Midolazam used to do that to him, mood swings. Diazepam too, but diazepam never made him lose time, although he doesn’t think he ever combined it with whiskey. Champagne, yes. Fuck. “I called you?”

“I can show you my phone.”

Tony hates how fucking tentative Steve sounds, like Tony’s some fragile thing that will shatter at the slightest touch. “Well, thanks for coming. I won’t be requiring any further nursing services, so you can just toddle on back to Nelson. Grab some twenties out of my wallet on your way out for gas money.”

Steve catches his breath and pulls back a little. Like Tony’s reached over and slapped him hard across the face. He doesn’t say anything and doesn’t move.

“Oh, don’t give me that kicked-puppy face,” Tony starts.

Abruptly, Steve closes the space between them and pulls Tony into a bear hug, pressing his forehead into Tony’s shoulder. Like that’s a sane reaction to what Tony just said. And he says, “I love you.” Nothing else. He doesn’t qualify it, even when it becomes clear that Tony’s not saying it back or even hugging him back, and he isn’t going to.

It’s the kind of naked vulnerability that Tony finds hardest to comprehend in Steve. Doesn’t he know, hasn’t he learned yet, that Tony’s going to hit him at every tender spot he reveals? That’s who Tony _is,_ he’s an asshole, he wasn’t a good boyfriend and he’s not a good person, and he will make Steve’s life worse, drag him into the cesspool and ruin him.

“Stop,” Tony says.

Right away, Steve lets go, backs off. He does it like—

Something. It’s weird, somehow, the way he lets go, how fast he moves backward. If Tony didn’t feel so completely like shit, he’d be able to put his finger on it. He says, testing the waters, “Did I—was everything okay last night?”

“No,” says Steve, with utter finality.

Tony waits, but Steve doesn’t say anything else. He probably tried to get Steve to sleep with him. What an attractive evening it must have been. He imagines himself drunk and handsy, and Steve fending him off miserably. Great. “Well, shit, Steven, are you going to make me play twenty questions? What happened? I’m sorry I cried on you or whatever.”

“It scared me. That’s all. I was scared for you.” He must see that Tony’s gearing up to be unkind, because he adds, hastily, “As your friend. I was scared for you as your friend.”

Tony has no idea what to say to that. The moment stretches out between them, brittle, and the knock at the door makes them both jump.

“Tony!” shouts Obadiah.

“Shit,” Tony hisses. “Stay here, keep your mouth shut, it’s my uncle, I don’t want him to know you’re—”

Steve gets that weird look again. “He knows already. I’m sorry. He came in this morning, he had a key.”

Oh, of course. Of course it’s Obadiah. Obadiah said something to Steve, and it got into Steve’s head, because that’s what Obie’s good at. He’s so exceptionally good at that. “Look, fuck him, okay? Just—just give me a second.”

He staggers out of the opposite side of the bed from where Steve is, just misses banging into a chair, and careens into the room’s foyer before opening the door. “Morning,” he says, deliberately louche, deliberately not ashamed of whatever Obie thinks happened last night.

But.

Obadiah says his name. And he says, “There was an accident,” but of course Tony already knows, he can see it in Obadiah’s face.

“Mom?” he says. He almost says, “Mommy?”

“The doctors said.” Obadiah swallows. “They told me that they were killed instantly. They wouldn’t have suffered.”

Behind him, Tony can hear the springs of the bed as Steve sinks down onto it. Obadiah hears it too, angles his head toward the noise. “Tony,” he says reproachfully, as if Tony’s engineered this whole thing to be an embarrassment of poor timing. “Now’s not the time for this. Send your athlete friend home, so you can do what needs to be done.”

Maria was supposed to die of cancer. It would recur, and they would all have time to prepare. Maybe Tony would ask her, maybe one day they would be alone together and he would ask her, _Did you know he hit me?_ At her funeral, he would be pale and drawn, and Pepper would hold his hand, and people would say, _At least she’s not suffering anymore._

Howard, of course, would have a heart attack. Alone in his office one night, drunk. It would strike him unexpectedly. Tony would only pretend to grieve.

Billionaires and their wives die of heart disease or cancer, and their children endow research centers to stop it from happening to anyone else. They don’t die in car accidents. Tony never thought to prepare for this. And what he can’t get his head around, he puts aside. He is very, very good at setting things aside.

He says, “What’d you say to Steve?”

“Tony, for Christ’s sake,” says Obadiah.

“No, I’m interested. You talked to him last night? What’d you say to him?”

“Kid, I know you’ve had a shock but—”

“I’ll make you a deal.” There is a steely edge to Tony’s voice. He can hear it. He knows that this is a way his voice can sound, but he’s never used it to Obadiah before. How strange, how unexpected, to find that it comes out easily, as if he has been doing it his whole life. “Stark Industries is mine now, and I can make money any damn way I want to, but you’ve only got this, so you have to goddamn listen to what I say. You don’t talk to my friends unless—”

“Friends,” Obadiah scoffs, his eyes very hard.

“Not to Pepper or Rhodey or anyone at Nelson behind my back,” Tony continues, stony. “As far as you’re concerned, Steve Rogers doesn’t exist. If you speak to him again, if you touch his life in any way, I swear to God I will tank this company. I will take every piece of it that works and tear it apart.”

Obadiah stares at him. Never before has Tony seen him speechless. Obadiah is always the one with all the words, twisting everything around into his version of reality.

It shouldn’t be possible to feel this way when you have just been orphaned. Tony’s never been good at feeling the way he’s supposed to, doing the thing he’s supposed to.

All his life, Obadiah has towered over Tony, but he looks—just for a moment—small, and old. Finally, he says, “You’re grieving. I’ll—we’ll talk again when you’re—”

He’s stammering.

“Yes, let’s do,” says Tony, and he shuts the door in Obadiah’s face.

He stalks back into the main part of the room, picks up the phone, and dials downstairs. “This is Tony Stark,” he says efficiently. “I’d like to request an additional hotel room for my friend, just for tonight.” He glances at Steve, raises an eyebrow, and Steve nods. “Yes, on the same floor if possible. It can go on my credit card.”

“You want me to stay?” says Steve, small.

“Of course,” says Tony, hanging up the phone. He’s miles ahead of that now. He can see everything, who he will be now, what he will have to do. How perfectly it will work. It’s like there have been blinders on his eyes, and the blinders were Howard and Maria, and now everything is utterly, prophetically clear. “Just tonight, and then you have to go back to Nelson.”

Nelson is where Steve belongs. The football team, Clint and Peggy, the math classes he’s barely passing. Everything that matters to Steve.

Steve is nodding. He puts out a hand to Tony, his fingers sliding over Tony’s knuckles. “Tony, I’m really—I’m so, so sorry about your mom.”

“Don’t touch me, I’m not doing that right now.” Right now he has to set his house in order. Obadiah, first, get all his ducks in a row. Then the funeral, then the company. The shareholders have to know that it’s him, it’s not Obadiah, who’s in charge. He has to make that clear straight away, no matter what else happens.

“Sorry. I’m sorry.”

That look is in Steve’s eyes again. The pulling-back look. Which reminds him: “What did Obadiah say to you? You look like shit.”

“He just. He was just trying to get me to leave. Tony, it doesn’t matter.”

Tony lunges for his suitcase and starts rummaging through it, looking for something that’s suitably somber and professional. Might have to have something shipped. “If it didn’t matter I wouldn’t have asked. Do you have a suit?”

“With me?”

Definitely he’ll need to have something shipped. Everything here is casual and ratty, designed to piss off his father. Missed a shot on that one. Tony’s hand finds something soft and warm. “Oh, thanks for the hoodie, by the way. Yeah, with you. Or you could go back to Nelson and get it. I don’t need you again until this evening.”

(The hoodie, his Christmas present, is in Badgers colors, with Steve’s number across the back. It smells like Steve’s dorm room, and on the way up to New York, Tony buried his face in it in the back of the limo and tried to pretend Steve was there with him.)

“I—I can—”

Tony turns around, the single button-up shirt he brought with him in his hands. “Steve. Christ’s sake. Obadiah said what to you?”

“He.” Steve’s back on his feet, his hands dangling uselessly by his sides.

When he plays football, he is all intention. _Be that one,_ Tony wants to say.

“He _what?_ Can you be back here by six? I should be able to get away by then. If anyone asks you can say that you’re a member of my staff. But just, you know, try to stay inconspicuous, don’t be all football-starry.” He can text Pepper to have something sent from—there’s probably something in DC that fits, that’ll work, that’s closest and easiest.

“Inconspicuous? Tony, can you just—” Helplessly, Steve makes a gesture with his hands like he’s telling a dog to lie down. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, here.”

“Jesus, Steve!” Tony rakes his hands through his hair. “Okay, one, answer my question. Two, go back to Nelson and get a suit you can wear, and whatever else, toothbrush and shit, you need to spend the night. Three, come here, try to avoid getting asked anything, and go upstairs to the room I booked you. It’s not that complicated. I have other shit I need to handle right now, okay? Obadiah said _what_ to you?”

“I asked him if he’d drugged you,” says Steve.

“And, and, and? I swear to fucking God, I have so much shit to do—”

“And he said he hadn’t been near you but I had. He said I had a bright future and I shouldn’t derail it by like—he basically accused me of— Tony, God, I know you don’t remember anything from last night, but I swear, I _swear_ I’d never, I swear to God in a million years I wouldn’t do anything to—”

His voice is getting shaky, but Tony doesn’t have time for vapors. That all makes sense, what Steve’s saying. It makes everything easier, probably.

“Okay,” he says. “That’s fine, I know that wasn’t you. Now just go take care of the shit I said, and they’ll have your key at the front desk when you get back. I have to do some work.” He doesn’t have his StarkPad, it got caught on something and snapped at the keyboard hinge, and now the screen isn’t working, and he spilled whiskey on it and fucked the circuits. Doesn’t matter. Pepper can get a replacement to him.

“I—okay.” Steve nods more times than he needs to, too many times, and Tony loses interest and stops paying attention. “Okay. I’ll just—I’ll go.”

So first: Gather evidence on the car crash. If Obie drugged Tony’s whiskey the night Howard and Maria were killed, that means he didn’t want Tony to interfere, and that means he’s the reason they’re dead. And if he’d do something as extreme as that, then this isn’t the first time.

Steve says something, and Tony looks up from his phone to see him touching the Badgers hoodie, in Tony’s suitcase, his fingers careful. “Sure, yeah,” Tony says, though he doesn’t know what he’s agreeing to.

And if he drugged Tony, then the back-up plan in case anyone found out about it was for Tony to take the fall. Stupid, because there’s no Stark Industries without Stark brains to invent things, but then, Obadiah’s probably not planning to have to need his fallback plan. Unlike Howard, Tony’s always done what Obadiah wants. Slowly, sometimes. Rebelliously, sometimes. But he’s always done it.

He texts Pepper to send his suit and a new StarkPad. Those will be the most urgent things.

He texts Obie to ask what he needs to do about the funeral, or if someone else will take care of it. He says he doesn’t know what the fuck to do. That will sound normal, be better. Let Obie think he is safe, until Tony has the time and space to burn down his whole life.

In the bathroom, there’s the sound of running water, and another sound, raw, unpleasant, familiar, that Tony doesn’t have enough time to think about.

He has lives to ruin.

 

Pepper gets a new StarkPad to him within the hour, and Tony goes to work.

He doesn’t bother about the car, for now. If it comes to it, he can have a private investigator look into that. For now, he just requests that the car be sent to his place in Malibu. That’s where he keep all of his own cars, anyway, and it will just look like he’s planning to repair this one.

Within the last three months (Tony finds this out first), Obadiah’s taken new steps to secure his data. It’s good work, if you aren’t a genius. He gets past a couple of layers of encryption before he figures out the system of numbers and symbols Obadiah’s been using to create his passwords, and then it’s easy.

(There’s one that’s based on Tony’s birthday, which might be a coincidence, those numbers in that order. Tony doesn’t dwell on it for long.)

The suit takes longer to reach him, and Tony’s getting ready to take the press conference in the nicest of his many not-nice shirts when it occurs to him that business as usual would include finding a way to piss off his father and uncle. Nothing says normal like a giant middle finger to the press at a time when Obadiah desperately wants them on his side. He throws his Badgers hoodie on instead.

Not because he’s shaking a little, from all the things he’s done, and still has to do, and he has to do them all alone.

Not because the hoodie, Steve’s Christmas present, smells safe and is warm and makes him feel like he’s not quite so far distant, after all, from this evening when he can have Steve again.

Obadiah answers most of the questions. He hesitates, artfully, when the Wall Street Journal woman asks what the loss of Stark Industries’ main ideas guy will mean for the future of the company. Tony picks up his head and whispers something to Obadiah, and Obadiah steps aside to let Tony have the microphone. The hoodie was a bad idea, after all, Tony thinks; but hopefully they’ll chalk it up to the eccentricities of genius.

“My dad is—was a brilliant man,” Tony says. Hardly a tremor in his voice (but there is a tremor; they hear it, they love it). “And one of the things that made him brilliant is that he surrounded himself with smart people. The brains and dedication in the Stark Industries R&D department are unparalleled, and we’re going to keep it that way. We’re going to make sure, every damn person in this company, we’re going to make sure that my father’s legacy is honored in the products that we create to keep America and its people safe.”

He pauses.

They like that answer. Like, not love. It’s a politic answer.

“Also,” he says, offhanded, “I’m not so bad of an ideas man myself.”

Cameras click.

“In fact, we’re working on something now,” Tony says. “It’s something that was very close to my dad’s—my father’s heart. It started as a collaboration between the two of us, and that’s going to be a labor of love.” Pause. “And, uh, incidentally, it’s going to mean that the American military never has to worry about IEDs again.”

He’ll figure it out later.

He gives the podium back to Obadiah. Obadiah winks at him.

For a second, he wavers. They are a good team, the two of them. Obadiah threw him that pass without a word of warning and trusted him to take it all the way to the house. And with Howard gone, maybe he and Obadiah could—

Tony isn’t stupid. He doesn’t let that thought take root. But for the first time that day, tears prick at his eyes.

He brushes at them with a flat palm. It’s good press, anyway, for him to be sad.

Afterward, for a few hours afterward, there are people to speak to, to smile at, the press, and those of his father’s friends (so-called friends) who can be bothered coming downtown. Everyone is desperate for Tony’s approval. He’s who they’re courting, but if he falters, looks weak, they’ll turn to Obadiah. They won’t trust Tony, when the crash comes, and they have to trust him.

All these men (mostly men, nearly always men). Shareholders. Vendors. Employees. Your-father-was-a-good-man liars. Their faces blur together.

What will they look like, what will they say a fortnight from now, when Tony sets all his plans in motion? When everyone finds out that Obadiah was making back-door deals with terrorists, when they learn about the things he did to the few employees who knew about it. Tony will cut a vicious swathe through Stark Industries, everybody who was involved and said nothing, and he will say _Sunshine is the best disinfectant_ and throw money at charities and offer to spend a whole year producing nothing but armor and vehicles, nothing that can hurt anyone, a gesture of good faith—

They won’t have to spend the year. He’ll offer, but the government won’t say yes. They’ll need SI’s weapons. The targeting systems. Computers, armor—Uncle Sam’s got too many eggs in the SI basket for them not to take Tony at his word when he says that he’s rooted out the poison in the company.

Tony smiles when Obadiah laughs, all day. When Obadiah offers him a drink, Tony takes it, and has the bartender swap it out for water.

All these years, Obadiah watched Howard treat Tony like shit, and he didn’t do anything because he respected Howard. Knew he was dangerous. _Stupid,_ thinks Tony. _You forgot I could be dangerous too._

Obadiah looks across the room, for Tony.

Tony smiles.

 

Because Tony is a gentleman, he remembers to knock at Steve’s hotel room door, instead of just going in with the key he got the hotel staff to give him. If Obie can do it—

(Probably not the best philosophy to live by.)

There’s a long enough pause that it occurs to Tony, for the first time, to wonder if Steve has come back. But he has, of course. Steve is reliable. He’s shaved, sometime between this morning and now, and maybe taken a nap—he doesn’t look quite so drawn. “Hey,” he says softly.

“Yep,” Tony agrees, stepping into Steve’s space and kicking the door shut behind him.

Steve is his reward. He deserves it now. He has been working all day, ruining lives, and Steve—

Tony puts his arms around Steve’s neck, like it’s all innocent, and Steve hugs him back right away, one hand cradling the back of Tony’s skull, the other around his waist. They don’t say anything. Steve is so warm.

“Fuck me?” Tony whispers into his ear, rolling his hips hard into Steve’s.

He wants this, just one more time before he has to be away, before he has to handle the mess Howard and Maria have left for him. For a second, Steve’s fingers tighten, and Tony feels a thrill of anticipation, and then—

Steve’s gone, and it’s cold again. Steve’s eyes are round and stunned, and his left arm crosses over his chest, the fingers digging into his right shoulder. “What?” he says. “Is that what you wanted me to—”

“I—yeah.” Was it not obvious? Steve loves him, and Tony needs this.

“I thought—” Steve makes a noise like a laugh. “I thought you wanted me to be—like, here for you. I thought you wanted—”

Tony tilts his head. Steve is such a space alien. “What? If you don’t finish a sentence I’ll never know what the rest of it is. You thought what?”

“God, Tony.” Steve’s shoulders hunch inward, his arms wrapped around himself protectively.

Oh. Because his parents are dead. Steve doesn’t think he should want to have sex when his parents are dead.

“Hey,” Tony says, closing one hand over each of Steve’s wrists. “Baby, look, I just—can we for a second pretend this isn’t happening, please? I thought about you all day. It was this fucking nightmare hellscape, all these assholes in suits trying to be my best friend now that I’m in charge of everything, and the only thing that got me through it was you.”

He’s good at seducing people. He always has been. Steve’s eyes search his face, and he makes his voice soft, he says what Steve won’t be able to resist. He says it uncertainly. “Did you—were you thinking about me too?”

“Yes,” says Steve, taut and miserable.

When was the last time Tony saw him smile? “What’d you think about?”

“I just.” Steve uncrosses his arms, lets them go back to his sides. Tony’s not greedy about it. With one hand he strokes his fingers down the side of Steve’s jaw, and the other plays with the hem of Steve’s shirt. “I wanted to be with you. I didn’t want you to be alone. I don't think it's the best idea-- I think you should just rest, maybe.”

“Kiss me?” says Tony, vulnerable on purpose.

And because Steve wants to take care of him, he always wants to save him even though Tony doesn’t need it and never did, Steve obliges. He kisses Tony so carefully, like it’s their first time, slow and sweet. Tony stumbles them sideways to the bed, and they fall onto it. Steve taking the impact on one shoulder, gallantly, like they’re falling on concrete and not linens.

If Steve thinks of it as comfort, he won’t get scared away. Tony lets Steve’s mouth go and tucks his face into the crook of Steve’s shoulder. He doesn’t have to do anything. If they’re pressed up against each other like this for long enough, Steve will want it too, he’ll feel their cocks hard and close and he’ll take what he wants, what Tony wants to give him.

But the seconds tick by, and Steve is just holding him, stroking one hand through his hair. It feels amazing and it is so, so not enough.

“Please,” Tony whispers, finally. “Baby, I need you, please.”

He doesn't usually have to ask. Eventually, Steve slides down Tony’s body and blows him, and it’s good and Tony comes, but after—

After, though—

It doesn’t matter. If this one single time Steve doesn’t want Tony to reciprocate, and won’t say why. Tony can fix it. He’ll fix it later, tomorrow, next week. Steve is a certain thing: Steve said he loved him, and he came back to the hotel and did what Tony wanted, even if—

For the first time ever, being here with Steve doesn’t dampen down the noise in Tony’s head at all. He begs: _Later, later, later I will,_ as if the things he has to worry about are sentient and can be reasoned with; but everything spins around and around. A roar, in his head. His parents, Obadiah. The company. Steve’s blue, blue eyes.

How losable everything is. How fragile.

“He killed my parents, I think,” Tony whispers, sometime late in the night. He’s shaking, saying it. To Steve, in this room. It’s the only time, he promises himself, that he’ll tell this secret to anyone. What he knows.

But Steve is already asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things will be better next time I swear.


	13. Huddle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! My original plan was not to post it until it was literally perfect, but, er, then I remembered that's not an attainable thing. Hopefully you'll enjoy it anyway!

Obadiah Stane is arrested the morning of the NFL draft.

It’s the first message Steve’s gotten on his other phone—the one Tony gave him—in over a month. The phone’s the last thing he’s kept of Tony. He’s let go of everything else, even taken Tony’s name out of his Google alerts, but he keeps the phone charged. _In case he ever needs me,_ he defends himself to an invisible Sam.

(Sam doesn’t know he has the phone.)

Ping, goes the phone. The text says: _Turn on CNBC right now._

He can’t change the channel until Sam gets picked. Sam goes late in the first round, to Atlanta. It’s not bad. Steve knows Sam would have liked to stay closer to home, but Atlanta’s a good city and a good team. Not so deep at WR that Sam’s going to get lost in the noise. _Look out, Roddy White,_ Sam texts Steve and Clint and Peggy.

A moment later: _For real, I respect Roddy White a lot tho._

Steve’s grinning when he changes the channel, and there it is: Obadiah Stane’s in actual handcuffs. The newscaster’s already gone past the part of the story that explains what he’s being arrested for, but it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t.

Steve hasn’t talked to Tony in over a month, and that’s—

Yeah. Fine.

The story that Steve told to Sam and Clint and Peggy, when he got back from New York, was that Tony just didn’t have space in his life for a boyfriend right now. He said they’d mutually decided to take a break while Tony figured out how to lead Stark Industries. And if Sam or Clint or Peggy had any doubts about the lie, they kept it to themselves.

The truth hurts too much to say.

Hurt. When it happened. Past tense. Steve’s over it now.

The truth would have made them hate him, and Steve didn’t want them to. When he got back from New York he still thought there was a chance that Tony would— That there would be something still, between them. And if there was, he wanted his friends to like Tony, not be mad at him.

The truth was he told Tony he loved him, and Tony didn’t say it back. Or: The truth was he loved Tony, and Tony didn’t love him back.

When the camera goes to Tony, impeccable in a suit and tie, the bottom falls out of Steve’s stomach, and he unmutes the TV. Tony’s got a phone in his hand. If Steve texted him, it would beep, it would happen now, the camera would pick it up.

“—long time coming, frankly,” says Tony. “It’s maybe not what my dad would have wanted me to do, but it’s the right thing. Stark Industries is cooperating fully with the agency’s lawyers, and we’ve voluntarily turned over all the relevant—”

Before he can stop himself, fully knowing that it’s stupid, Steve types into his phone, Tony’s phone: _You just left._

He counts his breaths. One. Two. Three. Four, and Tony’s eyes flick down to the phone in his hand, and he inhales sharply. Steve sees him do it, the sudden rise of his chest. Five, and Tony falters. What he’s saying to the camera.

He recovers quickly, of course. If Steve hadn’t been watching for it, he wouldn’t have noticed. Certainly the reporter doesn’t, and all too quickly they’ve thrown it back to the main news desk, and Tony’s gone from the screen.

In spite of himself, Steve looks down at his phones. The group text with Sam and Peggy and Clint has gone haywire, just in those two minutes; he has to scroll up and up and up to see what they’ve been saying.

_thats great man it’s the worst conference you can definitely beat the Bucs n shit_

_dont be such a shit Clit or you cant drink next time trivia._

Steve texts, _Clit?_

_oops terrible mistake oh dear what’s my phone done how emasculating for poor darling Clit  
oh gosh it’s happened again_

_I am not going to miss you fools_  
_except Steve_  
_I guess_

The Tony phone doesn’t do a thing.

 

_I got you something._

_I don’t want you to get me anything Tony._

_I meant made_  
_I made you something_  
_think you’ll like it_  
_can I come by_

The right answer is no. Steve knows this.

The right answer was not to watch the news coverage of Obadiah Stane’s arrest and all the fallout from it, but Steve’s been watching it anyway, furtively, where Clint can’t see him do it, every night for the last two weeks. SI stock has dipped forty-nine points, which even Steve knows is a bad thing. Tony keeps giving interviews where he says he’s committed to regaining the trust of the American people, and blowing the whistle on his uncle had to be the first step in that.

He says “getting our house in order” a lot. He is composed but honest; charming, and serious.

When he looks at the camera and smiles, he is so beautiful that Steve’s heart aches.

Steve texts: _okay but_

There he gets stuck. Okay but _what?_ Okay, but I don’t love you anymore? (Not true.) Okay, and I still love you, please take me back, I can’t stop thinking about you? (True, but pathetic.)

 _okay but it doesn’t change anything,_ he writes.

Tony doesn’t answer right away. Steve sits there staring at the phone, jogging his leg and wondering if he’s been too—

 _He listened to you have a panic attack in the bathroom of his hotel room,_ Steve tells himself sternly. _He didn’t, doesn’t, care about you._

But finally, his phone, Tony’s phone, vibrates.

_I know this is going to sound stupid_  
and I swear I dont want anything from you  
(except I hope we can be friends)  
but you  
(youre going to laugh at me) 

Steve swallows and texts, _I never laugh at you._

_okay look you changed everything_  
and I treated you like shit  
I get that  
and I made you this stupid thing  
whatever. its stupid. it doesnt matter  
shouldnt have texted  
I just really fucking miss you 

Tony, I don’t know what to say to that.  
I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. 

theres no supposed to  
its just what you want okay?  
look Im in the lobby at your dorm  
with the thing  
feeling increasingly like an asshole  
so 

Steve doesn’t take anything with him. Not the phone, not the keys. He’s out the door of his dorm so fast he’s halfway down the stairs before he realizes he hasn’t put shoes on. _Screw it,_ he thinks.

When he gets down to the lobby, he doesn’t immediately see Tony. Clint and Peggy are having one of their fights in a corner, which is a new thing this semester because they’re taking a class together and doing group projects a lot. Their styles of studying are pretty different.

“—absolutely fucked his head,” Peggy is shouting, “and don’t think that just because we don’t know exactly how you did it—”

“Going to call someone to come save you?” Clint says loudly.

“Selfish bloody arse, and don’t for one bloody second imagine that you can just walk in here and see him without—”

The penny drops a second before Clint shifts and Steve’s able to glimpse Tony, looking wretched, phone in hand, in the chair in front of Steve’s friends. “I know,” he’s saying. “You’re right about all of that, and if I can— Hey. _Hey._ ”

He looks so small, in that chair, and sad, but when he sees Steve, he smiles, anyway. It lacks the certainty of his regular smile.

Steve sketches a small wave, and Clint and Peggy wheel around. “Oh shit,” mutters Clint.

“Hey guys,” says Steve. “You wanna, um—”

“Oh, come _on,_ ” Peggy says. “Steve, seriously?”

“Yeah.” Steve’s apologetic, though they’re the ones yelling at his person. “He came by to talk. I asked him to.”

“Liar,” says Tony. “I came by without asking first, and Steve’s covering for me because he’s a really, really good person. Look, you guys can’t be more pissed off at me than I’m pissed off at me—”

“I can, probably,” Peggy says.

“—so once I’ve—I just want to say this thing to Steve, and then he’s going to go back upstairs and you can keep yelling at me, and I promise I’ll stay until you’ve said everything you want.” He catches Steve’s eye and adds, “Um, unless Steve doesn’t want me to.”

“No, that’s fine,” says Steve. Mainly to get Clint and Peggy to go away. They do, slowly, although they settle into chairs directly across the lobby from Steve and Tony, so they can keep glowering over their books.

Steve sits down. His heart is pounding so hard that he can feel the pulse of it in his ears. They’ve been broken up longer than they were together, at this point, he’s pretty sure. Or close to it. He shouldn’t feel this, this, this spurt of stupid, unbiddable joy at being this close to Tony again.

“So look,” Tony says. “I’m shit, and I know that. I don’t—there’s not a good excuse. I get into these headspaces where it’s like, finish the plan, there is nothing else but the plan—you know? And I didn’t _think,_ like— Like, my parents died. But right at the same time, I basically figured out that my uncle was— I mean, him trying to take over my company wasn’t the worst thing, obviously, and, but he _was_ trying to, so I had to— And that’s, it’s okay for just me, but I forget, or, I forgot, not forgot but I—”

Steve’s never seen him like this, choking on his words. Without thinking, he puts a hand on top of Tony’s, on the armrest of Tony’s chair. “You’re saying too many things at once,” he says.

“Right.” Tony lets out a breath. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t—that’s not what I came here for.”

Steve waits. After a second, Tony shifts his hand under Steve’s fingers, twisting it palm-up. Steve moves his own hand in response, but Tony’s fingers close over his wrist.

 _Let go,_ he orders himself.

He doesn’t pull away.

Tony’s eyes are gray as stormclouds, fixed on Steve’s face. It feels like a touch, and Steve shivers. _I’m not going to kiss him so it doesn’t matter what this feels like._ He can’t, anyway. In the common room. With Peggy and Clint watching, hostile-eyed and ready to pounce.

“You said you made me something?” Steve says, finally.

“Yeah.” Tony gives him that sad smile again, but he takes his hand out from under Steve’s and goes rummaging in his laptop bag. He comes out with a slim tablet and offers it to Steve.

“Oh. I can’t. I—”

“It’s not the tablet, Rogers. I’ve got all my work shit on there. Arrogant.” Steve looks up, ready to apologize, but Tony shakes his head and looks down, smiling. “Okay, just click it on.”

Steve twists the tablet around, looking for the on button; it’s not located in the same place as on the iPad they give him for football. After a second, Tony makes a noise that’s either a laugh or exasperation, and he leans over and flicks his fingers over the screen. The tablet lights up, and a picture appears hovering above it, a mother holding the hand of a child. They’re both wearing camouflage-pattern baseball caps, and the kid is smiling.

“Is—”

“Oh, hell, the logo didn’t come up.” Tony scrunches his face and takes the tablet back. “Fuck, that was supposed to work. It’s – whatever, just tap the screen and it’ll take you to the website.”

Steve obeys. The website that comes up is for a social service organization for the children and widows of American soldiers killed in combat. There’s a lot of logos in the sidebar, and Steve’s glancing over each one, trying to figure out which part of it he’s supposed to be looking at.

We’ll walk you through the first days of your loss and support you through—

Annie Casey Foundation, the Washington Warrior Widows—

Steve looks up at Tony.

“I just thought,” Tony says.

—transition back to civilian life—

Oh.

There isn’t a part he’s supposed to be looking at. This is the thing. This is what Tony made him. Kids who will be okay, when what happened to Steve happens to them. “You—” Steve says. His throat is tight.

“When I fuck up with Pepper or Rhodes I get them things,” Tony explains, his words falling over each other again. “And I know that’s not— Whatever. I did this instead. It’s—I think it’s going to be good. It’s sort of still in the planning stages now. You know. I endowed it, and figured out some other partners to— And we have the executive director and the chief finance person, so that’s— They’re going to, or, they’re supposed to, prioritize hiring veterans and widows or kids of—”

Steve nods. He nods hard, so Tony won’t see that his eyes are wet.

“Oh, and it’s like—you know. It’s, don’t say too much about it. I’m an anonymous donor, just— I didn’t want— So it’s a secret, sort of.” Tony grabs the tablet and stuffs it back in his bag. “Hey um.”

“Yeah?”

“You had a panic attack in the bathroom of my hotel?”

A wave of shame breaks over Steve. Yes. In among the white, pristine towels and the marble tiles. It seemed like it was never going to end. He thought he was going to die listening to the clipped, businesslike sound of Tony’s voice in the next room.

Even if he wants to deny it, he knows that his face has gone bright red, telling the truth for him. He swallows and says, “Yeah.”

“I figured it out,” Tony says. Steve can’t see his face, can’t look up at him. “After you left. A while after. Why you looked so—” He waves a hand. “It doesn’t matter. Look, I fucked everything up with you, I know that I—”

“No,” Steve says, automatically.

Tony lets out a small puff of a laugh. “Come on, Steve.”

His name, in Tony’s mouth. Steve pulls his legs up onto the couch. “When did you have time to do this?”

“What, treat the most important person in my life like shit? Pretty much always.” Tony’s voice is flippant, but his face, what Steve can see of it without actually meeting his eyes, is serious.

Steve waits.

“It’s—I don’t know. I work weird hours, so I did this during regular work hours. Pepper helped with a lot of it. She’s—yeah, she helped.” Tony runs a hand over his hair. “Steve, like—if you could say anything that— I have no idea what you’re thinking.”

That makes two of them, then. “I didn’t want—it wasn’t because of the panic attack. I know you had your own stuff that you had to deal with. It was—you wouldn’t—it—” Steve has no idea how to articulate what he means. The whole day had been wrong. Tony’s voice all slurry on the phone and the panicked drive to New York. Obadiah Stane’s insinuations.

Tony was gone when Steve woke up. Eventually, Steve found the note—it must have blown off the nightstand when he threw back his comforter. _I’ll call, T_ But that sick swoop when he saw the empty bed, and the memory of Tony the night before. How badly Steve wanted to comfort him, and how little Tony wanted comfort. The _wrongness_ of it all.

(He called, a week later, but Steve didn’t answer.)

“Hey.” Tony is kneeling in front of Steve, his hands hovering an inch away from Steve’s knees, like he’s scared to touch. “Hey. You okay?”

Across the way, Clint and Peggy are glaring. Steve looks up at them and shakes his head, then looks back down at Tony. He’s tired of lying. He’s tired of not saying what he feels just because it’s pitiful and melodramatic. “You just left.”

“It wasn’t supposed to—”

“You made me feel like I was—”

“—I’m already this fucking drag on you without—”

“ _That,_ ” says Steve sharply. “What the hell do you—”

Tony pulls back, and Steve does too, and Tony’s face changes from beseeching to angry. “Fuck,” he says quietly. “Look, I’ll do—I didn’t come here to—I’ll do this however you want. If you want me to go I’ll go.”

Yes. That's what he should want. What he says, though, is, “No.”

“Thank you,” Tony says, fervent.

He hasn’t, Steve realizes suddenly, said anything about press. “Should, ah—is it okay for you to be here like this?”

Tony gives him a very sweet, very innocent smile and puts a hand on Steve’s bare ankle. “Like what?” he says, batting his eyes, and he’s joking but his eyes are on Steve’s, and his fingers are touching Steve’s skin. It’s a drug, Tony’s attention, like this.

“Oy!” shouts Peggy.

“Oh for Christ’s— I was joking!” Tony yells back, over his shoulder. “Jesus.”

“Hey, Tony. When you’re—can you not do the Lord’s name stuff so much, when you’re with me?” Steve asks. “It’s okay some, but just—maybe less?”

You’d think he’d just handed Tony the deed to an island of his own, the way Tony lights up. Steve’s heart goes insane with it. (Tony probably does have his own island. He probably has like six of them.)

“Yes,” says Tony, scrambling to his feet and throwing himself back into his own chair. “Yes, yes, yes. I can do that. Yes, it’s okay for me to be here like this, yes, I can do the swearing less. Listen, the whole thing, the day my parents— I’m sorry.”

He swallows hard, and stops. Steve’s never heard him apologize before. “Thanks,” Steve says, helping.

“Oh G—oh, uh, heavens? Is that okay? Don’t thank me. It was shitty. Look, I’m not very good at—I don’t like you to see me when— I don’t want you to think I’m weak.” Tony draws in a long, shuddery breath, then lets it out. He catches Steve’s eyes and gives him a dazzling, not-real smile. “That was really really hard to say, shit.”

“I don’t think you’re weak.”

“I know,” says Tony. “It’s—I know. You’re just so fucking _good,_ like— Hey.”

“Hey,” Steve says.

“This isn’t because—I’m not trying to make you— I don’t want us to get back together.”

Ouch. “You don’t?”

“Piss off, Steve, of course I do. You’re like the most physically and morally flawless person who’s ever walked on this earth and I fell for you the first second you opened your mouth, and I’ve pretty much been further and further gone every minute since then. I meant, that’s not what this is. I know I, um, I know I broke that part. With you. I was shit to you and I know that.”

“Okay,” Steve says cautiously.

“If you’d,” Tony says. He hesitates, and blows a thin, careful stream of air out through pursed lips. “This shit with Obie and my dad, I know it fucked me up for a while, and I let it get on you. I made my shit your problem, instead of just fucking dealing with it, and it was the last thing I wanted to— And I’m just really, really fucking sorry, and I fucking miss you. And if you’d ever want to be— If you would ever want me in your life again, I would—that’s what I would want too.”

“I miss you too,” Steve says. That, at least, he can say, and be sure of.

Tony nods.

“You really hurt my feelings.”

Tony flinches. Steve opens his mouth to apologize, and Tony reads his mind, like always. “Do not say you’re sorry. That’s maybe the first time you’ve— We, ah, you and me but especially me but also you, we are not great at asking for what we need. You know—” He puts on a dopey voice. “Emotionally.”

“Yep.” Sam gets on his case about this.

“And I’m shit at letting people see that I’m not invulnerable and I was shitty to you to distract you from—that,” Tony says in a rush. “So, okay, here we go. Fuck fuck this is hard, okay. Howard started hitting me when I was thirteen. He’d never done it before, and I still honestly don’t get why he just quit liking me.”

Steve shifts, wanting to hug him, and Tony catches the movement and puts out a hand to stop him. “You can’t,” he says. His teeth are chattering. “You can’t, it can’t be, God you have no fucking idea how much I— It can’t be because of me, okay? I just want you to know I’m trying. And if you’d ever want me as your friend again, I’d want that. I’d want to do that and I’ll, I’d really try to be better. I’m trying to be better. Just—the idea of not having you in my life at all fucking sucks.”

“It does for me too,” says Steve. “I missed you.” He hates that Tony’s right: He knows it’s a bad idea to have Tony in his arms again, because the smell of him makes Steve make stupid decisions, but he wants to hold him.

“Okay,” Tony says. His arms are wrapped around himself, tight, but he’s smiling for real. “So I’ll—maybe we can—I’ll text you. Okay? And we can maybe one time get dinner.”

“Okay.” Steve is grinning. He can’t stop grinning. “Yes. Okay.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, genius.”

__  
I am going to die in this board meeting  
Im like 90% sure 

_Sorry, Tony, I can’t talk right now! At work!_

_oh fine_  
just leave me to my fate  
thats cool 

Later:

_  
Still alive?_

_ugh barely_  
Im working on this new thing to get them all excited  
supposed to be the grand finale for this meeting  
but they got all hung up on some bylaws shit  
how was your day 

_Lots of bylaws for me too_

_wait really?_

_Next time I see you_  
you will have to surrender your genius card  
sorry  
you don’t deserve it anymore 

_I cant believe I believed you_  
you sir are coasting on your stainless reputation  
the trust is gone  
the trust is totally gone between us 

_hey Tony_  
it’s not  
I know you were joking but  
it's not, okay?  
from me anyway 

Steve watches the animated dot-dot-dot on his phone for what feels like a while.

_  
you are my very absolute favorite platonic friend whose boundaries I respect_

_hahahahaha_  
I noticed you didn’t offer to pay me to leave work  
or show up at my work to take me away from all this 

_RIGHT??_  
Im growing  
as a person 

_yes, that was very good_

_dont patronize me_  
that is how normal people behave  
to their platonic friends  
I know things 

_Are you sure? I heard a rumor Tony Stark had been asked to turn in his genius card_

_you shouldnt believe anything you read in the papers_  
TRUST NO ONE  


They go to lunch the Saturday after finals, to celebrate. Steve picks up the food and meets Tony in the quad with it, since the weather has, for once, cooperated.

“Pay you back?” Tony offers, accepting one of the bags. He’s brought a picnic blanket large enough for them both to lie down on if they want, and two thermoses—one of those gross green smoothies for him, Coke for Steve.

“S’okay. Thanks,” says Steve.

“No, thank _you,_ ” says Tony carefully. “It was really nice of you to pick up the food.”

Tony is like this now, doing politeness as if it’s something he has memorized and wants to get right on the final exam. Mostly, Steve thinks it’s adorable, like watching a kitten learn to drink milk for the first time. But it also makes him feel like Tony is far, far away, untouchable.

“How was chem?” Tony asks, tearing into his burrito.

“Eh. Chem was chem. We didn’t get to study last night as much as we wanted, so I dunno.”

“How come?”

“Oh, just—housing stuff.” Steve realizes that he doesn’t want to get into this, but it’s too late now. “My dorm usually stays open for the summer, or I go stay with Sam, but I need to be on campus for work, and they’re renovating. So, it’s—but it’s fine. Clint’s got a lead on a sublet.”

He doesn’t know how to say the rest of it, that it feels strangely raw to admit he has nowhere to stay. Since Bucky died, he hasn’t had a place that belonged to him, a place you could describe as _home._ But this is—it feels worse somehow, than that. Not just nowhere that has to take him in, but nowhere to lay his head down at night.

(He thinks Sam must have picked up on some of this, and said something to Clint, because Clint’s been handling the whole thing, and Clint hates this stuff.)

“Gotcha. Um.” Tony finishes one burrito and slowly unwraps the second one, and it’s obvious he’s holding something in.

“What?”

“I don’t care if you say yes to this at all,” Tony says, “but my place is empty since Obie, since Obadiah—” He shakes his head. “My place is empty. It’s paid up through August, if you and Clint would want it.”

“That’d be—” Easy. That would be easy, and Steve has never trusted easy.

“You wouldn’t be going through me.” Tony licks a droplet of sauce off one finger and talks with his mouth full, elaborately careless. “I’d have to put you in touch with our real estate subsidiary, and you’d deal with them for the sublet. I could let you guys have it for eight hundred a month. You’d be doing me a favor, frankly, taking it off my hands.”

“Really,” says Steve. “I’d be doing you a favor.”

“Okay, no, I just said that so you wouldn’t feel weird about taking it.”

“Ha.”

“Look, it doesn’t matter to me if the place is empty through August, and the money’s nothing, I spend more than that on shoes. But it’s not like—I wouldn’t be doing _you_ a favor either. I mean it’d be value-neutral. I’d get some money I don’t need, and I wouldn’t have the use of a house I don’t need either. It’s mutually beneficial, but the benefit would disproportionately accrue to you, because the benefit I’d be getting would be fair but not relevant in the grand scheme of my finances.”

Steve can’t help laughing.

“What?”

“No, that was just really honest.”

Tony beams at him and makes a grand gesture with his hand, scattering rice from his half-eaten burrito across the picnic blanket. “Transparency. Transparency is the watchword. No secrets.”

“Yeah?” On impulse, Steve offers Tony his hand. “No secrets. Promise?”

“Okay, yeah. I promise.”

They shake on it, and if Tony’s a little bit quick to let go of Steve’s hand, and if it hurts Steve’s feelings a little because it’s not like he’s radioactive, neither of them mentions it.

“That was so nerdy,” Tony adds, but his eyes search Steve for signs that this is okay, this tiny insult that’s obviously a joke.

Sometimes he likes this new cautiousness of Tony's, and sometimes he wishes that they could find a way back to the days when things were simple between them. When he didn't know anything about Tony's screwed-up life, and Tony wasn't telling. It's a horrible thing to wish for. Steve would choose this over that--he _would_ \--but times like this, he wishes there could be a way to have both.

 

__  
would it be cool by you if I got season tickets  
for the badgers next year 

_sure_

_not like a box_  
just season tickets regular ones  
like a plebian 

_sure!_

_you can say no  
its okay to say no if thats not okay by you_

_I said yes though  
I’d like it if you came_

_I know_  
but Im saying  
if youre uncomfortable or its weird  
you can say no and thats fine 

_oh my God Tony  
get the tickets, it’s fine_

_Steve  
can I ask you to do one thing_

_yeah always_

_its just a small favor  
like just a personal moral thing for me_

_hang on stop  
I know what you’re about to say and it’s not funny_

_if you could cool it_

_I hate you_

_with taking the Lords name in vain_

_I take it back, you can’t come to my games after all_

_just cause Im catholic so its a pretty big deal for me  
you know_

_you’re the worst.  
hey Tony_

_you dont actually have to wait for me to say yeah_  
you can just go ahead and say what the thing is  
but  
yeah? 

_you’re not the worst  
I’d love it if you came to my games next year_

_youre not the worst either_  
despite your commitment to blasphemy  
if you change your mind let me know okay?  
itd be okay if you change your mind  
I wont be a dick about it  
swear  


“What?” says Clint, swinging his head down over the edge of the top bunk, his mouth full.

“Hm?”

“You’re all—” Clint waves a hand at him. “Laughy and smile facey.”

“I’ve been—I’m texting with Tony.”

“Yeah, no shit.”

“Then why’d you ask?” Steve says, annoyed.

“Cause,” says Clint, swallowing his gum, “so I could tell you me and Peggy know you’re talking to Tony again, so you can quit acting like it’s a secret. We’re not stupid, dude. You’re like—” He puts on a high-pitched voice. “Everything’s rainbows and sunshine, I’m Steve Rogers—”

“Yeah, that’s what I sound like.”

“Okay,” Clint says, “I’ll trade you. I broke it off with Kev. Being a secret’s not that fun, after all. Now you go.”

For the first time, Steve looks at Clint properly. He’s known about Clint and Kevin for a few months now, had noticed the way Clint would hang back to help tidy the weights room if Kev was there. He didn’t mind Clint having a secret. Somehow it had never occurred to him that Clint also _was_ the secret.

“Okay,” says Steve. “Okay, um—Tony’s—we’re talking again.”

“You mean you’re talking, or you’re like—” Clint waggles his eyebrows. “Like, _talking._ ”

“The—shut up. The first one.”

“Okay. And how is it?”

“It’s good.” Steve thinks about it. The way his heart leaps when he gets a text from Tony. “But it’s like—maybe I shouldn’t be.”

Clint nods, not offering an opinion.

“Do you think people can change?”

“Hope so.”

Steve puts his hands behind his head and just looks up at Clint. In the three years he’s known him, Clint’s never said much about his past. It wasn’t good, Steve knows. Maybe there was a brother, maybe who’s dead now. And someone taught Clint how to shoot. Steve knows that part too.

“Where I grew up,” says Clint. “It was like—us and them. Like that was the only thing anyone worried about so I thought that’s what people did. You take care of your own people, you know? And, just, fuck anyone else. Marks.”

Steve’s been to the shooting range with Clint, a few times. Steve’s a pretty good shot, and Clint— Steve’s never seen anything like Clint.

“And, ah, when I was fifteen, I guessed wrong about who my people were supposed to be, and they ditched me.”

“Clint,” Steve breathes.

Clint shakes his head. “Nah, no, look, it was good in the long run. This cop picked me up—or maybe like an FBI guy, I dunno, but— He didn’t know me for shit, you know? And I was this smart-ass carnie kid, and…” Clint trails off. “I don’t know, dude. He listened to me and gave a damn and acted like that was normal. And it was like—This sounds stupid.”

“It doesn’t sound stupid.”

“It was like I didn’t know people could be like that. Give a damn when they don’t have to. And I basically thought, shit, that’s _better._ That’s what I should try to be like.”

“You are like that,” Steve says.

“Fuckin’ hope so.”

“Fuckin’ know so.”

Clint grins. “Anyway, yeah, I think people can change, if they legit want to be different.”

“Okay,” says Steve. “Thanks.”

“Yep.” Clint’s head vanishes over the edge of the top bunk, then reappears. “Pretty sure Tony Stark just wants to get back in your pants, though.”

_  
want to get lunch tomorrow?_

_fuck you have no idea how much I want to get lunch tomorrow_  
I cant  
have to go to this arraignment  
hearing thing whatever 

_oh  
for Stane?_

_yeah_  
its not going to take that long but I should go  
and theres going to be press  
fucking nightmare 

Steve writes _do you want me to come?_ before he can think better of it.

His phone rings. It makes him jump. “Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” says Tony’s voice. “I wanted to—I didn’t want to do this texting. Look, I—”

“It’s okay,” Steve says. He’s used to this now, Tony pulling courteously away from him when he gets too close. “I don’t have to. It was just an idea.”

“No, I— I wanted to talk to you because I don’t know what to say. I know I took advantage of you. Before. When we were dating, I know.”

“You—”

“No, Steve, come on. I did. Whenever I wanted you to shut up about something I’d just act real sad so you’d hug me and drop it. I don’t want to do that with you now. That’s not, it’s fucking—I’m not going to do that. I’m—I don’t want this to be that. I don’t want to, like, ask you to do this thing, this big thing that sucks, and have you do it because I made you feel sorry for me.”

“Okay,” says Steve. He hates the tremor in Tony’s voice (which, he guesses, is exactly what Tony’s worried about). “So let’s do a deal. Can we do a deal? You’d act sad to keep secrets before, right?”

“Yeah,” Tony says, soft.

“Okay, so the deal is, I’ll come to the arraignment because I don’t want you to be alone. And then afterward you have to talk to me about it.”

Tony’s quiet for a bit. “That’s a pretty shitty deal for you. You’re supposed to be working tomorrow evening, right?”

“No,” Steve says, which isn’t true. He can call in sick. The thought of Tony at the arraignment by himself. Obadiah Stane a few feet away.

“Steve.”

“Okay, yes. But I can take one day off.” As he hears Tony breathe in, he says quickly, “I’m not taking money from you to pay back the lost wages, okay? I’m not doing that. That’s not what friends do.”

“Okay,” says Tony. “Let me pay you back for the train ticket or gas or whatever, though. It’s not free. I’ll pay for that and I’ll pay for our food, and the hotel if you stay the night. That’s fair, right? It’s my thing, and I _have_ the money.”

Steve hesitates.

He hesitates, and Tony doesn’t leap in to say more, and Steve knows that it’s driving him crazy to keep his mouth shut and let it be Steve’s call.

So that’s why he says yes.

 

Pepper emails Steve the information about the arraignment, and Tony’s hotel. He’s not sure what he’s supposed to do with the latter, but she sends a second email after the first, almost immediately: _He won’t know where he’s booked, he never does. I wanted someone else to have the reservation info, I’ll be in meetings all day tomorrow. Thank you for going to this. It’s a weight off my mind that he won’t be alone. P._

 _No problem,_ Steve emails back. He’s a little scared of Pepper Potts.

 

The New York courthouse is a zoo, and Steve has no idea what to do there. He feels awkward and enormous, and people keep jostling into him and then barking at him to watch it. It makes him miss New York, the rhythms of it that used to be second nature to him. It also makes it impossible to spot Tony in the crowd of gawkers and men in various uniforms and lawyers and press. He’s afraid that Tony’s going to go in by himself, but when he steps outside to call Tony and find out where he is, Happy collars him and points him in the right direction.

“Is he okay?” Steve asks.

“Better with you,” Happy says. He’s out of breath. “Go on, go in, I can’t leave the car—”

So Steve goes idiotically pelting back across the plaza, trying to pick out Tony’s dark hair in the crowd. He catches him just ahead of the metal scanner, which necessitates jumping the line in a way that Steve would never, ever do on a normal day.

“Hey,” says Tony, unsurprised. His face is tight with tension, and he barely looks at Steve. “Stay with me, okay? We should be in the court in a sec. It’ll only take—it won’t take long.”

And it doesn’t. People clear the way for Tony, reporters with cameras who try to bump Steve out of their path. He stays close, like Tony asked, trailing behind him and watching his shoulders hunch against the onslaught of questions. _Bastards,_ Steve thinks at them. This is the man he turned in. The only father he has left.

They end up in a tightly packed row on the prosecutor’s side of the court. It feels like church, Steve thinks, for a wedding: bride’s side, groom’s side. Tony is at the corner of the pew (bench), for ease of escape. He’s vibrating with stress, but when Steve leans slightly over, to bump Tony’s shoulder with his own, Tony exhales and gives Steve the ghost of a smile.

“Thanks for coming,” he whispers.

“Dirty,” Steve whispers back.

Tony snorts, and Steve feels a rush of pleasure at being able to make him laugh. He wants to put an arm around him. He knows he can’t. Even if they were together, he couldn’t, he’d still be a secret. Their pinky fingers touch, where they have each rested their hands on the wooden bench.

They stand for the judge, and sit back down, and then someone brings Obadiah in. Tony’s arm jolts. Steve nudges Tony’s little finger with his, and Tony glances at him. _It’s okay,_ Steve mouths, turning his hand palm-up. He doesn’t expect anything. He doesn’t. Not a smile, not a nod. But of all the anythings he doesn’t expect, he least expects Tony to lay his hand down flat on top of Steve’s, curving his fingers very slightly.

Steve watches Obadiah scan the courtroom for Tony.

Obadiah winks.

Tony’s face is stone. When Steve closes his fingers a little, to show him it’s okay to really hold hands if he wants, Tony’s grip tightens fast, painful. But his face shows nothing.

Obadiah turns back around to face the judge, and Tony relaxes, a tiny bit.

“That was good,” Steve whispers to him. “You did really good.”

True to Tony’s word, the arraignment is short. Obadiah doesn’t get bail, despite his lawyer’s argument that he has strong ties to the community. As he’s leaving the courtroom, he meets Tony’s eyes again, but this time, he just looks. And Tony looks back. Steady, with his hand in Steve’s.

As people begin to file out, show over, Tony doesn’t let go. “Tony,” Steve says, shaking their joined hands a little to indicate what he means. “The newspapers?”

“Is it okay?” says Tony. “Is it okay for you?”

“Yeah, I mean—yeah. _I_ don’t care.”

“Okay,” Tony agrees. So they’re holding hands when they go out, straight past the reporters shoving cameras in their faces. The mob of them might as well not exist. That’s how empty Tony’s face is, and his hand is cold. Happy is waiting for them, opens the limo door and uses his body to shield them as they get inside.

Tony lets go of Steve’s hand, finally. “I have to go back,” he says.

“You don’t,” Steve says.

“No, I actually do. It’s a tricky—I do. I wish I could get out of it. Happy can take you back—I wasn’t sure what you’d want to do. Happy can take you back to the hotel right now or, if you don’t want to stay. Penn Station if you want. It’s whatever you want.”

It’s like he’s reading lines off a prompter. It’s like someone else is animating him, and doing a bad job. “I’ll wait,” Steve says. “I’ll wait in the limo, we’ll just wait for you to get finished with the press stuff, and we’ll go back together.”

Abruptly, Tony’s eyes snap back into focus, and there he is, Tony again, the jagged edges of him. “Shit, Steve, I didn’t—that was so fucking stupid. I held your hand, they’re going to ask about you. I didn’t even—fuck, fuck, I didn’t even think about you, _fuck,_ I am so fucking, God, even when I’m—”

“Stop,” says Steve, in his defensive-captain voice. Tony stops. His breathing is not steady. “You tell them, that’s my ex-boyfriend.”

“They’ll know who you are,” Tony says. Gasps. “I’ve just, God, I’ve just dragged you into all this shit—”

“That’s fine.”

“It’s not fucking fine, Steve, it’s—”

“Hey,” says Steve. “You can’t panic right now. It’s no good. You have to go out and talk to them, so you have to be calm, right?”

Tony nods.

“I thought about it already,” Steve says. “When we were dating. I’m not deciding spur of the moment for this to be okay. Let’s try. Mr. Stark, we saw you engaged in an intimate moment with a tall handsome blond man. What gives?”

As he hoped, Tony cracks a smile, settles a little. “Rate yourself highly, don’t you?” he says. “Okay, um: Yes. That was my ex-boyfriend and current friend, cause I’m bisexual, even if this isn’t the venue I’d have chosen to break that news to you guys. I promise you all I’ll be on Ellen as soon as my beautiful and talented PA can book it and I have a spare second, and you’ll get to hear all about it then. For now, I’d like to stick with questions about the company and this legal news.”

“Really good. It’s okay to say who I am.”

“Thanks,” says Tony. “I appreciate that. But I think this way will be better, for now. Gives me time to discuss with my team how we want to roll this out, and—you know. You can think about it more. If you decide you want to be kept out of it, I swear to fucking God I’ll keep you out of it.”

Happy knocks on the window glass. Tony’s head turns in the direction of the knock, and when it turns back, his eyes have emptied out again. “Showtime,” he says, with a smile even Steve couldn’t have distinguished from his real one, if it weren’t for his eyes, and he’s gone in a sudden shock of voices and camera flashes.

 

If Tony seemed drained after seeing Obadiah, he looks ghastly by the time he gets done giving interviews. There were two scheduled, Happy tells Steve as they’re waiting, one with WNYC and one with the _New York Times,_ and he has a prepared statement for the rest of them.

It isn’t that much, shouldn’t be. But when he gets back in the car, he’s like ice. It’s almost June, and warm, but there are goosebumps on his arms where he shoves up his sleeves, and he barely looks at Steve during the drive to the hotel. “It was bad,” he says. “I just want to get somewhere quiet so I can—so it’s just you and me and I can quit pretending I don’t feel like shit.”

When they get into midtown, Tony won’t go into the hotel Pepper booked. He presses himself back into the seat and says “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Steve’s annoyed with Pepper for booking it, truth be told. Now that he sees the front of it, he can see it’s the same hotel he stayed in with Tony the last time they were in the city. The same hotel where Tony found out his parents were dead.

“Kiddo, a bed’s a bed,” Happy offers.

“I said I can’t go there,” said Tony tightly. “Just—keep driving, please. I’ll—just, head downtown, I’ll have Pepper’s assistant figure something out. Steve, I’m getting you a room so you can— You don’t have to stay the night, if you don’t want, but it’s—it’ll be there if.”

They end up, because apparently Tony subscribes to a rewards program or Pepper’s assistant is terminally uncreative, at the same hotel they shared when they saw _Hamilton._ It feels like a million years ago. This time, they go in together, Tony’s chin up as if he’s daring anyone to say anything to them. Ready for battle.

Happy goes out for pizza and beer. There’s a place in particular, nearby, that Tony likes. When they get upstairs, to the room that’s for Tony (Steve’s is on another floor, something he can’t help wondering if Tony did on purpose), it’s scary how fast Tony falls apart. He drops before Steve’s even finished closing the door, shaking badly, his breathing labored and painful, wrapping his arms tight around his knees.

It’s like crying, Steve realizes. It’s what he does instead of cry.

He knows exactly how much Tony hates Steve seeing him like this, so he doesn’t fuss. He sits down beside Tony, so that Tony can lean against him if he needs to, and waits. The one time—because he can’t help it—he tries to touch him, Tony flinches away. Steve leaves it be. It’s not about him. It’s not about him.

“I’m sorry they left this mess for you,” Steve says, when the worst of it’s over, when Tony’s teeth are still chattering but he’s not letting out ragged, raw pants anymore.

“I hate them,” Tony whispers. “I hate them I hate them. I hate him.”

“I hate him too. Listen, it’s—we don’t have to talk about it tonight. I know I said that, but—”

Tony picks up his head. “No secrets,” he says, stronger. “We shook on it. So listen: He killed my parents. I got the car, I looked at it. He fucked with the brakes. He drugged my whiskey so I wouldn’t remember the night, so he could blame me later if someone got suspicious.”

Well, that much, Steve already figured out. “I’m sorry.”

“When—fuck.” Tony rubs his eyes. “I fucking hate telling you what I— This is hard, it’s, I wish I could— And you’re so— I don’t like saying that I’m—I don’t—”

“Hey, tell you what.” Steve reaches up and sideways and slaps at the light panel, enveloping them in inky darkness. It’s easier that way. Telling things. “I’ll go too, okay? I’ll say a hard thing. When my mom died, I was—a lot of what I felt was angry, not sad. Like how dare she leave me alone. And I couldn’t say that to anyone. Even Bucky, I was— He was there with me the whole time, and I was pretty terrible to him.”

“Yeah?” says Tony, on a breath like a laugh. “More terrible than I was to you?”

No. Steve doesn’t answer.

“Steve. Come on. If I can say it, you can. Tell me I was shitty to you.”

Steve’s chest hurts. “A little,” he admits. “You—after we had sex, that night—”

“Which you didn’t want.”

“Which, okay, yeah, wouldn’t have been my Plan A.” Steve swallows. Tony’s right, and Sam’s right: It’s incredibly hard to make himself say something like this, to admit hurt. “But afterward, when you— I did it to make you feel better, and then you obviously _didn’t_ feel better, and. Like, I went along with this thing that I thought was a dumb idea, but I was trying to do it your way, and then you were still sad. I was pissed off, and I was sad too, and you were scaring me, and my feelings were hurt that you didn’t care I was trying.”

Tony doesn’t answer. In the darkness, Steve can only see the shadows across his face, none of his expression.

“And you should have cared I was trying,” Steve says.

“I know,” Tony says, his voice barely there at all. “I’m sorry.”

Steve’s eyes sting. He wants to take the words back, but it won’t help. It won’t help to have them unsaid. “So tell me what Obadiah should have done.”

“I know you want me to say he should have stopped my dad from hitting me,” says Tony. His head tilts, rests on Steve’s shoulder.

“Yep.”

“But, come on, realistically he mostly wasn’t even there. He didn’t live with us. What was he going to do?”

“Did he say something to your dad?”

Tony shrugs.

“Come _on,_ ” says Steve. “We made a deal. You can’t cheat on the deal.”

For a second, he thinks Tony’s going to lash out at him again, kick him out, send him home. But Tony says, “Okay. He told me it was my fault. I tried to kid myself that he was saying all the same stuff to my dad, how it was both of us antagonizing each other, but he wasn’t doing that. He wanted me scared.”

“Are you scared still?” Steve says.

Tony twists around, his face into Steve’s collarbone, fingers digging into his shoulders. Steve is so inadequate to this, but he hugs Tony tight, draws up his knees so that he’s holding him in every way that he can, awkward-angled and uncomfortable. What he wants to say is: “I’ll protect you.”

But that isn’t, of course, true.

“It’s okay,” Steve says, into Tony’s hair. “You stopped him. When you figured out that you had to, you stopped him.”

Steve knows a secret that Tony won’t ever tell him. He’s not sure Tony even knows. But he saw murder in Tony’s eyes when he admitted that Obadiah had come to talk to him, at the hotel. Before Tony knew that Howard and Maria were dead, he already had it in him to destroy Obadiah Stane. Steve saw. As Tony went to answer the door that morning, Steve thought: _He’s going to kill him._ He thought: _He’s going to kill him, for me._

“And you have Pepper,” Steve adds. “She’s really scary.”

“Ha.”

“And Rhodes, he’s like, an army guy. And I could be a spy.”

Tony emerges from Steve’s embrace with half a smile. “You would be the worst spy. You’re too honest.”

“That’s what a really great spy would want people to think.” Steve reaches up and swipes a thumb over Tony’s cheek, testing for tears. Their mouths are close, and he remembers how Tony tastes. The sharp tang of his mouth, the sounds he makes when he comes. Steve remembers. It shivers through him.

Carefully, he slides his hand down, brushes the pad of his thumb over Tony’s mouth. In the darkness, Tony’s eyes are wide, gazing into Steve’s. His lips parting. Stunned, and lovely.

It’s only Steve who moves, shifting so that his lips touch Tony’s, fitting their mouths together, asking.

“I can’t,” Tony breathes.

Steve rocks backward.

“I—shit.” Tony gets to his feet, leaning against the closet door. The angles of him remind Steve painfully of meeting him for the first time. He was so impossibly, unattainably beautiful. (Is, still.)

“Why not?” says Steve. He’s pleading. “I thought you—”

“That can’t be why I brought you here.”

“I _came_ here.”

“I know, but that can’t be why. I can’t be that fucking selfish. Is—” His eyes are in shadow, but he’s watching Steve, and his voice is fragile. “Is that okay? Steve?”

“Yes,” says Steve. “Of course. Yeah. Yes. It’s fine.”

He can’t see a way back to normalcy, from this. He gets to his feet, feeling like he has too many arms and legs, and swats at the light panel.

Tony squints at him through the sudden brilliance. “Hey,” he says. “You want to watch _Star Wars_? I want to watch _Star Wars._ Want to?”

So they do: Tony on one of the beds, Steve on the other. Happy, eventually, in the armchair, which he drags over from the sitting area. Whenever Steve opens a beer, Tony opens one, but he doesn’t drink any more than that. He yells “Don’t pause it for me!” when he goes to the bathroom in the middle of the Death Star run, and he pauses when Steve goes out for ice during the Battle of Hoth.

“They should hire me as a science consultant,” Tony says through a bready mouthful. He eats his pizza insanely: toppings first, then cheese, then crust. “That ship could be way better.”

“That is the Millennium Falcon,” says Steve, scandalized. “It’s flawless.”

“You’re flawless,” Tony grumbles.

“Glad someone finally noticed.”

“Shh,” says Happy. “Best part.”

It’s the part where the Falcon almost gets eaten by a space slug. “You are a total mystery to me, Hogan,” Tony says.

Happy leaves halfway through _Return of the Jedi,_ and it shouldn’t matter because Tony’s already said they’re not doing anything, but the air of the room feels heavy and portentous, with Happy gone.

At the end of the movie, Luke Skywalker’s father cares about him, after all.

 

In the morning, when Steve knocks at Tony’s door to see if he wants breakfast, Tony answers wearing the Badgers hoodie Steve gave him for Christmas. He was expecting Happy, obviously, and he crosses his arms fast over his chest, trying to hide the logo.

“Did,” says Steve. A riot in his heart. “Did you, um, did you want breakfast?”

“Yes, yeah, yes.” Tony is uneasy, unsure, and Steve hates it. “Yes. Let me just—I’ll change into real clothes, and meet you down there?”

They eat the free breakfast the hotel offers. Tony makes a horrible face at the coffee, but then drinks five cups of it in a row.

“I should get back,” Steve says.

“Yeah,” says Tony, a little sad. “Thanks for coming, you— It was—” He shakes his head and says, with that careful formality, like he’s memorized it in advance, “It was really nice of you to come. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t been here. I was dreading it.”

“Yeah, of course. Any time, hey, just—you know. Just let me know, if you ever need me, and I’ll come if I can.”

Tony smiles. “I know you will.”

Steve gets up, and Tony stands up with him. They stare at each other. Steve isn’t sure if he’s allowed to touch.

After a second, Tony says, “Fuck it.” He hooks a hand into the neck of Steve’s shirt and pulls him into a hug, melts into him like they used to, like they’ve never been apart. It pulses through Steve, the closeness of him, the smell of his hair. _Please,_ he thinks, not sure what he’s even asking for. _God, please, please._

 

Like he said he would, Tony goes on Ellen. He calls Steve two weeks before the taping and asks him how he wants Tony to play it.

“Cool,” advises Steve. “Always gotta play it cool.”

“I’m hurt that you thought you even needed to say that to me,” Tony says. “Seriously, eighteen, do you want me to keep you out of it? She’s not going to ask about it on the show, but after?”

The pet name, _eighteen,_ slams into Steve with the force of a punch. He can’t catch his breath for a minute, after. The last time—

The last time—

“No,” he says.

“Sure? You sound a little—” Tony lets the sentence go unfinished, as if he’s not sure how it’s supposed to end.

“What, you think I’m embarrassed for people to know I dated a super-hot genius billionaire?” It’s hard to keep his voice light. The last time Tony called him eighteen, he said it through moans, desperate with pleasure, Steve’s hand stroking him closer to orgasm, his head back and his lips parted, messy dark hair on a white, white pillow.

Tony’s talking, asking him something. Steve misses it. “Say again? You cut out for a sec.”

“Oh, I was—hey, are you okay? You sound really weird. If you don’t want to be part of this, you gotta tell me, all right? I can fix it that way, but I can’t do it if I don’t know what you want.”

“No,” Steve says, strong. “I’m fucking proud of you. It’s not a secret.”

There’s silence, on the other end of the phone. Finally, Tony says, his voice a little hoarse, “Watch the language there, Rogers, huh?”

“Oh shut up.”

“Hey Steve?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m—I was proud of you too. It wasn’t ever about that, you know?”

 

Tony doesn’t tell Steve when his show airs, but Steve looks it up and has Peggy DVR it, so he can watch it later. That she does this with a minimum of tsking is a testament to how busy she is. She has her eye on some government program that she’s applying to for the fall, so she’s trying to take extra classes and graduate by the end of summer.

To save money, she’s staying at Clint and Steve’s place. Tony’s place. She has the upstairs all to herself—Steve discovered, when they were making decisions, that he couldn’t quite bear to sleep in the same bed he’d shared with Tony—and Clint and Steve share the downstairs.

Tony’s place is emptier even than it was when Tony had it. Someone came and cleared out the messy workroom area, Tony’s bots and toys and computers. But the couch is the same, the living room couch, and shivers of memory go through Steve when he sits on it. Tony falling asleep on him during _Dr. Strangelove._ Tony in the kitchen, making omelets. Their hands, laced together.

“It’s who I am,” says Tony, on the screen. “And—look, to be, to be able to say, to not have to hide that part of myself, that’s—that was big. That’s a big deal for me. I wish I could have done it when my mom was still alive. I wish I could have shared this with her.”

“And how do you feel now?” asks Ellen. (Steve likes her. She’s funny.) “Now that it’s out there?”

Tony smiles, the smile that made Steve fall for him. “Really really good,” he says. “Really good. I’m, ah, I think I have everything basically figured out.”

“Everything?”

“Pretty much everything, yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He grins, and the audience laughs. “Nineteen’s the age when you quit making mistakes, right?”

Nineteen?

“You might be off by a few years,” Ellen says.

Tony laughs with her. “A few, yeah, maybe. Maybe! I mean, hey, I’ll be old enough to drink in two years, so that’s—” The audience loves this. “—you know, I hear good things about alcohol and decision-making. But no, look, it’s—if I’ve learned anything since, in the weeks since my parent passed away, it’s that secrets are—they poison everything, every good thing you might have. So being honest about this, it’s what I had to do, and it’s what I wanted to do.”

Steve’s stuck on the age thing. He’s eighteen. He’s not nineteen yet.

_  
did I miss your birthday?_

_new phone who is this_

_it’s Steve_

_I WAS JOKING_  
_to indicate that you didnt need to worry about birthday shit_  
_you didnt miss my birthday_  
_I mean I had a birthday_  
_but I didnt do anything on it_

_you turned nineteen on it_

_yes that is correct_  
_I now am nineteen_  
_you have a very strong grasp on the function of birthdays congratulations_

_har har_  
_I want to do something about it_  
_want to come to Nelson this weekend?_  


Tony doesn’t respond right away. Then:

_I always want to see you but I mean_  
_you dont have to do anything_  
_I dont care its not like_  
_Im sort of old for birthday cake_

_Tony_

_yeah?_

_want to come to Nelson this weekend?  
I want to celebrate your birthday with you_

_okay_  
_thats really nice of you_  


 

_Tony’s Birthday_

_balloons (helium?)_  
_make cake_  
_vanilla (not imitation)_  
_flour_  
_cocoa powder_  
_sugar_  
_butter_  
_eggs_  
_?buy frosting?_  
_call pepper & Rhodes?_

He doesn’t call Pepper and Rhodes, and he doesn’t let himself think about why.

On the day, absolutely everything goes wrong. He’s supposed to start the soup early, so it can sit around all day soaking up the flavor of the spices, but he oversleeps his alarm and then gets halfway through sautéing the vegetables before realizing that he’s missing a can of tomatoes. The grocery store is only five minutes away, and they have the tomatoes, but when he gets back, it’s to discover that he didn’t turn the burner all the way off, and the garlic and onions and celery and carrots have started to smoke.

Steve goes back to the store for new vegetables, and when he gets home with them, he remembers that he already poured all the leftover bacon fat down the drain, which means he has nothing to cook the new veggies in, unless Peggy has olive oil.

She doesn’t.

So he has to go back to the grocery store _again,_ and start the whole thing over from scratch.

The mixer breaks down halfway through making the cake. It’s not a sign. Steve can just as easily mix the thing by hand.

But the cake comes out a little saggy and forlorn-looking, which Steve thinks is maybe because of the mixer and maybe because Clint was stomping around the kitchen while it was baking. He should have asked him to stop, but it’s already nice enough that Clint’s spending the night on the couch at Peggy’s, so Steve can do this thing with Tony.

(It’s not a sign that this dinner is doomed and Tony doesn’t want him. It’s just food, it’s just a mixer.)

When he goes to pick up the balloons he’s ordered, he starts to feel slightly cursed. They have the balloons ready, all heliumed up, but the center one says CONGRATULATIONS GRADUATE instead of HAPPY BIRTHDAY, and when he asks them to exchange it, they insist that that’s what he ordered and he can’t just change his mind in the middle; and he’s already pre-paid so he doesn’t have any recourse.

To cap off everything, when he gets back with the balloons, Tony is sitting on the steps of his place, doing something with his phone. Which means Steve has to wrestle the stupid, wrong balloons out of the back of his stupid, shabby car with Tony watching out of his stupid, stormy, perfect eyes.

“They’re the wrong ones,” Steve says, crossing the gravel to Tony. He wants to just let go of them, except there’s a weight on the end of them, so they’d just drop anyway. “You’re early.”

“I thought the train would take longer.” Tony holds out his free hand—the other one’s holding the handles of a cloth bag—for the string of balloons.

Steve doesn’t surrender them. “They gave me the wrong balloons. You took the train?”

“Yeah, I didn’t want to make Happy—yeah. I took the train. Hey, this is good, it’s like—I’ve graduated from the, the, the school of hard knocks with my shitty dad and my shitty uncle. That’s what you really wanted to celebrate about me anyway, right?”

“No,” says Steve, grumpy, not helping. “It’s supposed to be a birthday party. I messed up your soup, and the cake’s all crummy.”

“You made me a cake?”

Steve says, again, “It fell, though,” and Tony steps aside so that Steve can unlock the door and let them both in.

“So this is how the downstairs half lives,” says Tony. “It smells good. Give me my balloons.”

“No! I’m putting them around. You weren’t supposed to be here yet!” Steve’s trying to tease, but it doesn’t come out like teasing. This damn day. The soup, the cake, the balloons. Tony, now. Every part of it wrong.

Tony tilts his head to one side, examining Steve. Then he shucks off his coat and tosses it across the back of one of Steve and Clint’s folding chairs. He sets his bag down and fishes out a bottle of whiskey and two Solo cups. “Here we go,” he announces. “You have been working all day, so _you_ get the first shot of whiskey. You have ice?”

“Yeah.”

Steve has a cup of whiskey in his hand faster than he’d have believed possible. As he’s looking down at it, still feeling mopey, Tony taps the bottom of his Solo cup. “Drink up,” he orders.

“I wanted—”

Tony looks pointedly at the red cup.

Steve drinks it. “I wanted everything to be just right,” he says. “I already missed your birthday, and these stupid balloons—” Now he does drop them. The little sandbag makes a dull thud on the wood floor.

“I love the balloons,” says Tony. “After the big one deflates I’m going to frame it and keep it in my office. Steve, are you— Is the reason you’re looking so fucking sad, is it that you think you didn’t do a good enough job making this whole thing special for me?”

Steve knows he’s being childish. “Sorry.” This stupid day. All the food, and the balloons.

“Baby—no, sorry, fuck. Steve. Can I—” Tony drinks his whiskey, one fast gulp. “Look, I mean— You know how—Okay. It’s—I got—when—”

“It’s fine,” Steve says.

Tony takes two steps toward Steve, and he thinks, for a second he thinks— But Tony’s just collecting the red plastic cup. “Another one?” he says, and when Steve shakes his head, Tony goes up on his tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek.

Before Steve can think about it, Tony’s already gone, fixing himself another drink. Steve touches his cheek, and he has to fight not to smile. When he looks up, Tony is watching him, unreadable as always.

“What?” says Steve.

“What?” repeats Tony. “You. I don’t understand how I got so fucking lucky.”

Steve’s breath catches.

“The—” Tony shakes his head. “I meant. I. To be. To. For you to.”

Steve is not proof against a slightly flustered Tony Stark. “Sit down, genius, you’re supposed to be the guest of honor.”

While they wait for the garlic bread to cook, Steve ties balloons to all the curtain rods, and Tony sits on the couch and watches him. They are both smiling a lot. Steve can’t remember the last time they were together and they were this happy, both of them at the same time.

After everything, the soup comes out fine, maybe too salty, but generally fine. The cake looks so disgusting at the center that Steve decides to steer around that part. While he’s frosting it—he went with store-bought frosting, the prospect of mixing up a batch from scratch having proved too daunting that day after all the soup disasters—Tony digs a record player out of a closet and puts on the only one of the three records he deems acceptable.

“Happy’s music taste,” he explains, setting up the speakers, “is deplorable.”

Steve likes the way Tony uses words that people know, but nobody ever actually says. Deplorable. He repeats it under his breath while he’s frosting the edge parts of the cake.

The record is Frank Sinatra. Old classics, or something. Steve’s pretty sure that Tony’s chosen it because he knows it’s what Steve likes. When Tony listens to music, it’s usually too loud to pick out any kind of melody.

“I didn’t get candles,” Steve confesses, bringing Tony a squarish slice of cake that he’s cut carefully from the good sections. “I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to make it because of work, and then I’d just have a bunch of candles I couldn’t use.”

Tony shuts his eyes and blows at the top of the cake. “I get my wish anyway, though, right?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He says, “Of course you do.”

Before, Tony was laughing, but when Steve says this, his eyes grow serious. He wets his lips and opens his mouth as if he’s going to say something important.

The record skips. They both glance over at the record player, expecting to have to thwack it, but it gets back on track of its own accord.

“Thanks for this,” Tony says. It wasn’t what he was going to say. Steve can hardly ever read Tony, but he knows, he’s certain, that wasn’t what Tony was about to say.

“Yeah.” Steve takes a bite of the cake. It isn’t bad.

“Fly Me to the Moon” comes on. Tony seems altogether focused on his cake, but his lips curve upward. If Steve weren’t sure before that Tony chose this record because Steve would like it, he’s sure now.

“Hey,” says Steve. “Dance with me?”

Tony hesitates. He hesitates, and he’s going to say no.

_—let me play among the stars_

“Please,” says Steve.

Tony sets his cake down, offers a palm-up hand to Steve, and lets himself be pulled upright. Steve twirls him, because he wants to, because he wants to see Tony’s eyes lit with laughter.

“Gallant,” Tony says.

“Shut up.” Steve’s fingers rest on Tony’s waist, tug him close.

“Leave—leave room for Jesus, Rogers.”

“I want,” Steve says, bossy, “to feel you.”

Tony’s eyes flick up to Steve’s, and he looks so young. He looks as young as he is—a boy, not a CEO—and Steve didn’t stop loving him when he could have, when he had the chance. Steve pulls him closer, presses their joined hands against his heart, and sways them.

Steve doesn’t know what Tony’s allowing himself today, how much will be too much. He knows he loves him. He can be certain of himself, at least. _Stay, stay, stay, stay._ Frank Sinatra sings that you are all he longs for, and Tony Stark is quiet and solid in Steve’s arms.

_In other words, hold my hand._

“Would you want,” Steve says. “Would you ever want.”

_In other words—_

“I don’t deserve you,” Tony whispers. He doesn’t look at Steve when he says it. “I fucking don’t, Steve.”

Steve tips Tony’s head up.

_Fill my heart with song—_

He says, “Love’s not really a ‘deserve you’ thing. And that’s not what I asked.”

“I get things wrong,” Tony says. “I’ll hurt your feelings, and you won’t say.”

“I’ll say. No secrets.”

“I don’t want to do this wrong. I don’t want to be bad at it again.” Tony is small and scared. He is breakable, and he is letting Steve see.

“Still not what I asked.”

“I just—”

Losing his mind, Steve kisses him.

It tastes like coming home.

Tony swears, _fuck fuck,_ into Steve’s open mouth and Steve swallows it, the sound of his voice. Tony’s mouth is sweet from the birthday cake, bitter from coffee—like always, like always—and his free hand, the hand Steve isn’t clutching to his heart, digs into Steve’s neck.

Steve can’t stop kissing him, though Tony keeps hesitating, watching Steve’s face for a sign to stop, and then plunging back in like he’s starving. Steve is kissing him too hard, their teeth clink together, wrong angles. Tony tilts his head and licks into him filthy and wet.

Yes, yes, yes. This, yes.

“Eighteen, God, please—”

If Tony didn’t love him, if.

If he never called him eighteen again.

If, if.

But he does, and he did, and Steve is never letting go of him. He fills his hands with Tony’s ass, pushes him closer, grinds them together. Tony moans open-mouthed and attacks Steve’s collarbone with teeth and tongue. “You feel fucking incredible,” he gasps. He’s clawing at Steve’s shirt, pulling upward at it. “God, Steve, God, fuck, you drive me wild, get this off, I need your skin—”

Skin, yes. Steve can’t think clearly, is drunk on Tony, but skin, yes, that’s the best idea. He scoops Tony off his feet, one hand under his ass, the other on the nape of his neck, pressing his head down so Steve can kiss him, unsteady and messy, while he staggers them towards the bedroom. He tosses Tony on the bed.

For a second, they look at each other. They are both out of breath. Tony’s chest is heaving, and his pupils are huge, his lips swollen, shirt jerked sideways. He looks like sin. He looks—

“Lie back,” Steve says.

Tony obeys him, never taking his eyes off of Steve’s face. Steve ditches his shirt and crawls onto the bed. He noses at Tony’s erection through his pants. “That’s for me, huh.”

“Everything’s—” Tony’s hands come down, to frame Steve’s face. His clever, callused fingers. “Baby. Are you sure?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Steve says. He licks up the fabric that’s covering Tony’s cock. Tony’s head goes back on a desperate whine as Steve unbuckles his belt.

“It has to—Steve, please—it has to be what you— _fuck!_ Give me a sec, please. Please.”

Steve tosses Tony’s pants across the room and flops himself down on his side beside him. He puts one leg between Tony’s, and Tony’s fingers skim across Steve’s chest, which makes it very hard to concentrate.

“Not for my birthday,” Tony says.

“Yes for your birthday,” Steve growls. He knows Tony likes it when he growls, and sure enough, Tony pinches one of Steve’s nipples, retaliating. Steve gives him a little show in response, arching into the touch, groaning like Tony likes. “And Easter and Fourth of July and Flag Day and Bastille Day and Wednesday and the day you have a shitty board meeting, and the day I don’t get drafted and the—”

Tony surges forward and kisses him hard and fast. “God, Rogers, if you’re trying to get me to say I love you, then _fine,_ I fucking love you.” His voice sounds normal, arrogant, but he’s shaking. Tony.

“I know,” Steve says in his best Han Solo impression. Tony rolls them a little so he can tuck his face into Steve’s neck.

“Jerk,” Tony says.

“Dope.”

“Slut,” says Tony, which is exactly as stupid-sexy as it ever was, running a shudder from the nape of Steve’s neck all the way down to his groin.

“Only for you,” Steve says, pushing Tony’s shirt up. He kisses down Tony’s sternum, reveling in the feel of Tony’s fingers in his hair, the sound of Tony’s breath going ragged and desperate. “Tell me,” Steve says, “talk to me.”

“Yes,” chokes Tony. “Yes, yes, fuck, okay—”

Steve sucks at the place on Tony’s throat that always makes him whimper. He slides his hand, careful, slow, down Tony’s chest, rubs briefly at the hollow of his hip, and gets Tony’s dick out of his boxers, stroking him up and down. He calls him “Baby” because Tony loves it.

“I want your hands, eighteen, I want your incredible fucking hands on me, I want to get my mouth on your cock, lick you and suck you until you’re right on the fucking edge, and then I’d make you just fucking wait for me.”

Steve moans. He’s going to come like this, still in his jeans, rutting against Tony’s hip and he can’t bear the idea that his skin won’t be touching Tony’s.

“Take your _fucking jeans off,_ ” Tony demands, reading his mind.

Steve obeys, fast and frantic, kicking himself free of socks and jeans and underwear. When he’s done thrashing around, Tony straddles his hips, presses his hands into Steve’s shoulders. He says, “You’re so pretty.”

“Can I,” Steve says.

“Anything. Anything. Yes. Tell me.”

“You’d make me wait for you what?” says Steve, because his thoughts are whirring in a thousand directions and they keep catching on things that feel important.

Tony leers at him. Steve’s breath stutters, he can’t help it.

“To fuck me,” Tony says. “Of course, I meant, to fuck me. I’d make you watch while I prepped myself, and I wouldn’t let you touch your cock, your gorgeous dick, I’d just make you watch me, and then—” Tony glances at the bedside table, leans over sideways. “Steven.”

“Mm.”

“Is that a brand new unopened bottle of lube and a nice new box of condoms?” Tony rolls his hips, and it’s unbearable friction. Steve is lost to it.

“I wanted—I thought—”

“Don’t be such a whore, eighteen.”

Steve makes a needy whine in the back of his throat while Tony is wrestling the plastic wrap off the top of the lube. Steve remembers, he does. The way to curve his fingers, to make Tony scream. When Steve offers him his hand, Tony squeezes lube onto his fingers, and Steve reaches down, gentle, gentle.

“You missed this,” Steve says. Pressing in. “Tell me.”

“Missed what.” Tony is teasing him.

“Fucking yourself on my fingers? You missed it?”

Tony shuts his eyes. “Fucking _fuck._ When did you— Yes. I missed—God! Steve. Just—fuck, one’s enough, I’m fucking ready, I’m— Wanna ride you, I want. Steve, I need, God, I need your dick, I need your big hard cock fucking me, opening me up, please, please—” Steve has two fingers in him now, and the way Tony’s rocking against him is going to make Steve come way too soon. He is all want, all heat.

“I said I’m ready!” Tony barks, pulling Steve’s head back by the hair. It hurts, and it feels good, it feels so damn good. When Steve reaches for a condom, Tony slaps his hands away and does it himself, rolling the condom down with both hands, touching him everywhere, thighs, balls, cock, so that Steve’s already lost the ability to speak by the time Tony slides himself down, torturously slow, onto his dick.

“You good?” Tony asks. He’s tight and warm and familiar. Steve shudders with the sensation of him. “Take that as a yes,” says Tony, and he starts to move.

Steve doesn’t last long, he can’t, not with Tony above him like every fantasy he’s had in the last few months—or, be honest, since he first met him. All the days and weeks since he’s been able to touch Tony, have him this close, are coiling into a hot, fast urgency. Far too soon, he’s gasping out “I’m close, I’m—” and wrapping his hand around Tony’s dick, trying to get both of them to come at something remotely resembling the same time. 

“Eighteen—” Tony says, voice rough, and Steve’s back arches as his orgasm explodes through him. He forgets that he’s supposed to be taking care of Tony, too, and gives himself up to it, wave after wave of pure, desperate pleasure. Somewhere above him, he hears Tony swear viciously. By the time he can think again, Tony is coming spectacularly over his stomach and chest.

Fuck, Steve tries to say. His voice doesn’t produce the sound.

When he can move, he rolls them sideways, pulls carefully out of Tony, and gets up to dispose of the condom and clean up his chest. Tony’s hardly moved by the time Steve comes back from the bathroom: he’s lying still on his back, his eyes closed.

“S’just me,” Steve says.

Tony doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look at Steve. _Please,_ thinks Steve. When Tony does open his eyes, Steve wants to be able to see, for once, for _once,_ what he’s thinking. And have it be—

( _Have it be that he loves me._ )

Have it be that he isn’t going to run.

He locates his boxers and puts them back on, then crawls into bed, half on top of Tony, his cheek resting in the small hollow beneath Tony’s shoulder. Lying like this, he feels a pulse, fast and frantic, but he can’t be sure which of them it belongs to.

_I’ll hurt your feelings and you won’t say._

“Hey, um,” says Steve. “Is—what are you—was that okay?”

_I’ll say._

Tony cracks an eye open. “I think ‘okay’ would fairly drastically undersell it.”

“You’re just being really quiet and I got worried.” It’s hard to say that much. But they said no secrets.

“Yeah, I—” Tony rolls over, so he and Steve are both on their sides, facing each other. “I’m, I don’t want to— Jesus fuck, eighteen, don’t make that face. You don’t know what I’m going to say yet. I don’t want to _assume_ anything, okay? Because I’m— When we started, when you let me be part of your life again, like—”

He falters, and Steve brushes a fallen strand of dark hair away from his eyes.

“I decided I’d just be, be grateful for whatever you—however you’d let me— I wanted everything to be your call. Whatever we ended up being to each other. I don’t want to ask for more than you—” Tony’s gray eyes flick up. “Do you know what I mean?”

God, Steve is not up to this. His heart is racing. “Do you mean you don’t want to be my boyfriend again?”

“ _No._ ” Tony says it so vehemently that they both laugh a little. “I mean I want that way way way too much. And I’m—like, I’m this asshole person about it. Or I can be,” he adds quickly, seeing that Steve’s about to protest. “I don’t want to be an asshole to you. We broke up, and—”

“I didn’t.”

Tony laughs, sort of. “That’s not how break-ups work. Look, I—whatever you want this to be, okay, I’m in. Whatever you—if you want to be friends, or friends who fuck on birthdays, or—”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. Before, when Steve kissed him, that fragility that Steve glimpsed in him, it’s still there. It’s right at the surface. Never before has Steve thought with such clarity, _I could break this person,_ and it’s because Tony is giving that to him, trusting that he won’t do it. It makes his eyes sting.

Quietly, Steve asks, “Do you love me?”

“Yes.” Tony’s hand, against Steve’s chest, is cool, and his eyes are fixed on Steve’s.

“Then I want to try again. If—if you do. You know I love you, I’m—” Steve bites the side of his thumb. “I want to be with you. I thought—I think we’re good together.”

“Yeah,” Tony says. “I think we are too. I mean, when I’m not being a prick.”

“Yep,” Steve agrees, to make him laugh.

Tony’s face breaks into the smile that made Steve fall in love with him, utterly deliberate, utterly sure. (Can he say that? Did he fall in love that first night, at Lynch’s, or is everything since then washing back and making it seem that way?) “Then yes. Is it—yes. Done. We’re dating.”

For a second, Steve just stares at him. It can’t be that easy. _Yes. Done._ He’s sure that Tony will balk and take it back. “Seriously?” he says.

“Yeah.”

“But—and no secrets?”

Tony laughs. “Okay, then I’m going to have to be honest and confess that I’m furious you put your boxers back on. We only have so many years of this kind of refractory period, and I _obviously_ wanted to suck your cock still.” Tony puts his head to one side. “Steve. Eighteen. Are you blushing? Are you seriously blushing right now? God—um, goodness me, you’re so fucking adorable.”

Still grinning, Tony scoots his body over and tips his head up to kiss Steve. It’s too hot for this, both of them still sweaty from sex, humid summer air blowing in from the kitchen where Steve opened a window; but there’s no part of Steve that wants Tony to stop touching him.

Since Bucky died, Steve hasn’t had a place you could describe as home. But this, now, Tony’s mouth on his, this feels the most like it than anything has since he lost his family, lost Bucky. He thinks that maybe (maybe), if he kisses him forever, Tony Stark can be his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obvs the boys can’t live _actually_ happily ever after cause they both need to work through some shit. But I like to think they live at least, like, 70% happily ever after, and maybe gain a percentage point every year or two.


End file.
